


A Series of Unfortunate Dates

by happybeans



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: (#notsponsored), (as a sideplot), (sort of), Case Fic, Comedy, Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M, Matt lowkey-highkey has anxiety, Romance, out of context quote: "Praise be to God--they end up at a Texas Roadhouse"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2020-11-22 03:23:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 26,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20867396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/happybeans/pseuds/happybeans
Summary: Believing that Foggy's getting bored in the relationship, Matt sets out to become a more exciting boyfriend. Like with most things, he takes it a little bit too far. Just a little. And with two new cases demanding their attention, the whole situation's a recipe for disaster.





	1. The Diner Date

**Author's Note:**

> Everybody's posting their spooky Halloween stuff (which I love). Guess it's time for me to drop my fall romcom.

He’s really going to die this time.

“Matt...you doing okay, buddy? You’ve got that whole...” Foggy waves his hand around, and some of the cool air smacks Matt in the face.

“You’ve got that ‘resting disgust face’ going on,” Foggy finishes. “The one where you simultaneously look like you wanna throw up and commit murder.”

“Yes,” Matt grits out, and leaves it at that.

There’s a moment of silence, then Matt hears the wet pull of Foggy’s lips into a smirk. An objectively gross noise, but it seems Matt’s been pavloved into liking it; even in spite of everything, Matt wants to smile along with him.

“Um,” Foggy says, humor in his voice. “Now, was that a ‘yeah, I’m okay’ yes or a ‘I would like to commit murder’ yes?”

Matt wrinkles his nose because _why is he still hearing it?_ He grunts, letting that be response enough, and Foggy huffs a short laugh.

“Well, now that’s—actually probably better if you don’t confirm anything. Plausible deniability and all.” He rotates his wrist in the air as he says it, and the bones click-tack-crack, harmonizing horrifically with the disgusting squish of chewing from across the room.

Matt pushes his plate away with a huff, nose wrinkled and eyebrows furrowed, and, okay, he can understand the ‘resting disgust face’ thing now.

“Seriously, though,” Foggy says then takes a sip of his tea. His throat convulses slimily and sends the tea down with a squelch—a noise that normally could be ignored if Matt wasn’t already overstimulated—then continues, “What gives?”

“On your five-o’clock,” Matt says, throwing as much disdain into it as possible.

Foggy, with no subtlety or finesse whatsoever, whips the top half of his body around and cranes his neck to look over.

Not that Matt particularly cares; let the man know they’re talking about him. He should be ashamed.

There’s a moment of quiet from Foggy. Then:

“What exactly am I looking for?”

Matt scoffs. As if it’s not painfully obvious. There are times that Matt envies Foggy.

“The man with the meatloaf is chewing with his mouth open,” Matt complains with a curled lip.

Foggy stays in position for a moment. Perhaps looking for himself to confirm? Matt doesn’t get why Foggy’d want to see it; just hearing it is a level of Hell even the Bible didn’t talk about.

Then Foggy starts laughing.

“I love that you know it’s meatloaf he’s eating,” Foggy says. “Can you taste it from here, too?”

The gag Matt pulls is honestly only half-faked. It makes Foggy laugh even louder, though.

“Wow, I am so glad I don’t have your life,” Foggy says through his laughter. “Do you want me to go over there and stop him? ‘Excuse me, sir, but your eating sounds are bugging my super-senses boyfriend.’”

“That might not go over so well,” Matt agrees.

“You know I’d do it for you, though,” Foggy claims.

He definitely would not. Still, Matt fans himself with one hand, deadpanning, “My hero.”

Foggy’s chair creaks, and Matt can feel his hand coming closer. He wrinkles his nose and holds back a flinch, immediately assuming that Foggy’s going to grab his face or something, but instead Matt just gets his hair ruffled. Actually it feels kind of nice. Matt tries to subtlety tilt his head into it.

“Would it help if I hummed really loudly?” Foggy asks.

Matt laughs. “As if I don’t hear enough of the _Wicked_ soundtrack at home.”

Foggy’s hand draws back, and he uses it for a dramatic gasp.

“How...how dare you...blaspheme like this?! You kiss your boyfriend with that mouth?”

Matt puckers his lips, leaning forward.

“Definitely not,” Foggy says, though his laughter warbles it into something nearly unrecognizable.

Matt falls back against his chair. He attempts a fake pout, but it strains too hard against his growing smirk, so he probably just ends up looking like an idiot in the moments before he gives up on it entirely.

He pulls his plate back towards him, however reluctantly, and just sits there for a second. He dings his fingernails on the cold, ceramic edge of it, doing his best to hone in on the sound. It’s good. Grounding. The sound reminds him of a teeny church  bell—or  maybe two glasses clinking together, though without the reverb at the end. 

He holds onto the vibrations of the sound for as long as he can before they dissipate into nothingness.

There’s an unusual quiet from the other side of the table, and he swears he can feel Foggy watching him, so Matt picks up his remaining BLT to take a bite. It seemed like the safest option, considering how their poultry smelt. A lady across the room is having a chicken caesar, and something about that chicken...but that’s diner food for you.

The BLT really isn’t so bad. The lettuce is a little limp, and the tomato was clearly cut more than a few hours ago (and it wasn’t washed well...it tastes like pesticides), but the bacon... Somebody back in the kitchen really likes bacon, surely, because they did not skimp.

It’s actually not even half bad. It has that liquid smoke taste, yeah, but it’s a decent cut with a solid meat-to-fat ratio. Plus, it actually tastes like  _ bacon _ , not a chemical mess of hormones and preservatives. It’s cooked perfectly, too, just the right amount of crisp to the edges so that it crunches with a satisfying snap under his teeth.

And perhaps it’s a bit greasy, and maybe they didn’t clean the grill right before cooking it, but that just means that there’s also a savory maple sausage hint to it. And if he really hones in, he’s surprised by an eensy hint of vanilla and sugar and flour—Foggy’s pancakes, which they must have cooked beside the bacon. That, or maybe Matt’s just tasting it from across the table. Both very viable options.

He pauses his chewing when Foggy’s breathing turns stuttery. Laughter. Matt furrows his eyebrows, lips thinning, but he finishes his chewing, slow and suspicious.

He swallows the bite finally, asking, “What?”

“Nothing,” Foggy replies immediately, voice light. Uh-huh.

“What?” Matt tries again, unable to keep his own laughter from his tone.

Foggy breaks off into snorts, and it’s a good few seconds before he’s able to get out: “Nothing, it’s just—ahaha!—you look like you’re really enjoying your sandwich there, buddy.”

Uh, yeah, he’d hope so.

“Your pancakes taste better,” Matt admits then starts making grabby hands towards Foggy’s fork. “Gimme some.”

Foggy pulls his fork-holding hand out of Matt’s reach. “Eh-eh, get your grubby paws outta here. What did I say, Matt?”

Matt’s grinning, breathless laughter banning the idea of any kind of response. Though, it doesn’t seem like Foggy expects one since he continues:

“What did I tell you? I knew you would want breakfast food, but what did you say? C’mon, tell me what you said.”

Matt sighs, a very drawn-out and theatrical sound, and starts inching his hand towards his own fork. 

“I said I thought the eggs smelt funny,” he concedes, even as he picks up his fork and begins the slow trek towards Foggy’s plate.

“Uh-huh,” Foggy goads, “and how do you feel now? Maybe next time you shouldn’t be so judgy before you—hey!”

In a very cobra-like move, Matt abandons subtlety, stabbing his fork forward and piercing the pancakes through to the plate. He can sense Foggy reaching to snatch his hand away, so Matt gives a little shake, dropping the bottom two pancakes before making off with the top layer.

“Hey, you—get back here!” Foggy stutters, perhaps louder than is table appropriate.

Matt holds the pancake away with a triumphant grin, leaning his head forward and opening his mouth wide.

“Maaaatt!” Foggy moans, “Give it back! Don’t you dare take that bite, Murdock, I swear.”

Matt pauses, mouth maybe a mere inch away from pancake heaven. “You swear what?” he asks, just to be a shit.

With a scoffing ‘ah’ of affront, Foggy stutters: “I—just—agh!” It’s then that he seems to realize that threats won’t get him anywhere, and Matt can feel him changing tacts.

“Matt,” Foggy tries again. “Babe. C’mon. Don’t do this to me.”

For a moment, Matt’s actually thrown. They’re still fighting over a pancake, right?

“Do—do _what_ to you, Foggy?”

“Ignorance is not a good look on you,” Foggy scoffs. “The piece you stole has all the whipped cream on it. That’s literally the best part!”

Matt tilts his head and sniffs. Huh.

“Oh,” he says. Then: “I don’t like whipped cream.”

The texture of it is wonderful, like liquid clouds. But the taste...he holds back a shudder.

“Exactly!” Foggy exclaims. “But I do! Now fork it over.”

Matt hums. “Trade?” he asks.

“They’re my pancakes!”

Matt shrugs then fakes like he’s about to take a bite.

Foggy’s hands come up, palms out. “Okay, okay, okay!” he concedes. “We’ll trade! Now get your mouth away from my man!”

“I’m your man,” Matt laughs.

“After this betrayal?”

In response, Matt licks the bottom of the pancake still skewered on his fork, just to be a dick.

“You’re a dick,” Foggy poetically chimes. “Also, you’re getting the shitty bottom pancake, which never has any butter on it. Statistically speaking, anyway.”

Matt would like to read the study, please.

Foggy uses his fork to lift the top pancake and grabs the bottom one with his hand. There is no reason for him not to do it the other way around; he gets his fingers all over it just to be a jerk. Touché.

Foggy holds the pancake in the air above Matt’s plate and pauses. “No funny business,” he warns, and Matt hardly has the time to pull his BLT to the edge before Foggy’s flapping the pancake down onto the plate like it’s common trash.

Then Foggy gestures towards his own plate with both hands. “Okay, gimme.”

Gravity’s been trying to claim the stolen pancake for the past minute, so Matt lets go of the urge to mess with Foggy more, releasing the pancake onto Foggy’s plate with class and grace.

“Thanks!” Matt says with a cheeky grin.

There’s a sigh from across the table, and Matt imagines Foggy’s rolling his eyes with it.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Foggy says with a wave of his hand. “You better enjoy that pancake, though. Like, pornographic moaning-level of enjoyment.”

Matt laughs even as he feels blood rush to his face. “Foggy, we are in public.”

Foggy shifts around, possibly shrugging. “And? As if anyone in here gives a damn.”

And, okay, well, fair point. Matt can tell without even trying that at least half the people in here didn’t shower today, and of them a couple didn’t even bother with deodorant. There’s a teenaged couple across the room who are getting just a little too touchy under the table, and a middle-aged couple is comparing their equally-right-wing views on the other side.

Yeah, Matt and Foggy are just fine. But still, even just the word’s use in public makes Matt’s nunly upbringing cringe.

Knowing Foggy’d definitely win this one, Matt concedes the point with a silent curled lip of distaste. He turns his plate what feels like about 180 degrees to get at his hard-won pancake.

The first bite isn’t exactly like Heaven—but it’s close enough. It definitely beats limp lettuce, at least.

And Matt was wrong about the eggs, thankfully. Maybe it was just one carton with suspect ones—either way, Foggy’s pancakes ended up with the good ones.

Matt mmm’s dutifully, doing his best to keep the noise a polar opposite to ‘pornographic’.  Judging by Foggy’s snorted laughter, it’s a success.

He hears Foggy quietly go back to his own pancakes, and through his next few bites, Matt tries to discern what the silence means. Is Foggy lowkey mad about the grand theft breakfast food? Matt’s pretty sure they were both joking, but sudden doubt creeps in sour on his tongue.

He’s almost about to offer Foggy the pancake back, but he stops himself and peels the top layer of toast off his BLT instead.

He slides two pieces of bacon onto Foggy’s plate as a sort of peace offering, a mumbled ‘thank you’ on his breath.

“Aw, any time, Matty,” Foggy says, reaching over to pat Matt’s cheek obnoxiously.

Matt scrunches his nose but lets it happen.

And so, well into the afternoon hours, they eat pancakes and sip coffee and tea.

It’s nice, really. Foggy’s here, and Foggy’s happy, and Matt’s happy for his company.

What more could he need?

Quiet. Just a moment of quiet, apparently. It’s just his luck that after such a stressful work and ‘work’ week, Matt gets sat near the loudest eater in the world.

Mr. Loaf (‘please, that’s my father, call me Meat') somehow manages not to drive off the lady he’s with as he squishes through loaf-shaped beef and corn-mixed mashed potatoes.

It’s fucking disgusting. Really, Matt’s not even hungry anymore...but Foggy ‘gave’ him this pancake, so Matt’s going to finish it.

No matter the cost.

“When I chewed with my mouth open, the nuns smacked me with spoons,” Matt says grumpily, shoving another bite of pancake into his mouth and chewing it violently. Even before Daredevil, Matt’s knuckles were calloused.

“Um, you realize that’s not a good thing, right?” Foggy points out then takes another sip of his iced tea. “Like. You didn’t deserve that.”

Matt rolls his eyes. “Maybe.”

Foggy hums, and Matt takes his own loud, squelching sip of coffee.

“Seriously, though, do you wanna take this show on the road?” Foggy asks suddenly. “I don’t mind a little living room picnic.”

Except Foggy does mind. The whole point of this diner adventure was ‘to get out of the house for once like the classy people we are’. Of course, class for them apparently means cheap diner food. But regardless.

“Nooo,” Matt groans out. “It’s fine.”

“‘It’s fine’,” Foggy mocks in a voice way too nasally to be Matt’s. “You said the same thing last time you got a knife in the side.”

Fair enough, but, “Well, I was fine,” Matt argues. “‘‘Twas but a flesh wound.’”

“Don’t you quote at me. Besides, it definitely was not.”

The waitress walks by then, Matt recognizes her by her floral soap, and Foggy jumps at his chance.

“Excuse me, miss, could we have a couple boxes and the check when you get a minute?”

Matt’s mouth falls open with a breathy ‘ah!’

“Oh, yeah, sure thin—“

“No wait, we won’t need anything to-go,” Matt interrupts. “We’re perfectly happy with finishing our meal here.”

“Um—“

“Ignore him,” Foggy says. “We would like a couple of boxes, please.”

“Excuse me, but—“

Matt cuts off as Foggy kicks him sharply under the table.

“Don’t mind him; he’s blind,” Foggy says calmly, as if that explanation makes any sense. “We would like boxes and the check, please. When you have a second.”

“Gotcha,” the waitress says quickly then starts walking away a split-second later. Thankfully, it doesn’t seem like they annoyed her too much, since she laughs to herself as she walks across the room.

Meatloaf Man doesn’t mind either; he’s still chomping away without a care in the world.

“Stop moping,” Foggy says, kicking Matt much more gently.

“M’not moping,” Matt says. “I’m grouching.”

This startles a laugh out of Foggy. “Well, stop grouching, then.”

Matt scrunches his nose and lips together. “No,” he says, with just slightly more grouchiness than the situation deserves. Then, with a more appropriate level of grouch, “I can’t believe you played the blind card.”

Which is true. Foggy really doesn’t play it often.

“I know, and I’m sorry for it,” Foggy says plainly. “But I know you, and I know you were probably doing that guilt thing in your head again. Really, Matt, it’s fine.”

But is it, though?

Matt’s abused shin is nudged once more.

“Look, this is good,” Foggy claims. “We’ll walk home and it’ll be wholesome and romantic and then I’ll smoke you at UNO again.”

Matt’s quiet for a moment, considering.

“Okay,” he says finally. Mustering up a smile, he adds, “That sounds nice.”

Then he pretends not to notice where the check is when it comes. As payback.

————————————

Matt lets out a long, suffering sigh. He shouldn’t have even said anything at all.

“Foggy, I don’t know what to tell you. It came out in like 2013.”

“First of all, _Wicked _is timeless,” Foggy says. He’s juggling the take-out boxes in his left hand, impressively managing to gesture with it in spite of that. “Second, I know you like it, too. Don’t pretend. I don’t have your senses, but I can still hear you singing it in the shower.”

One time.

“I agree that it’s catchy,” Matt says, sidestepping a piece of mint gum. “Plus that one song was pretty heartwarming.”

“You mean the one that made you cry?”

Matt huffs a laugh. “I may have gotten a little emotional.”

“There were tears. It was awesome. Crosswalk.”

They come to a stop, and Matt’s argument dies in his throat.

Foggy’s rocking back and forth on his heels, humming quietly.

Walking with Foggy is nice because Matt gets the chance to at least somewhat turn off his senses, for a short while. In the beginning, back when Foggy first started guiding him, Matt couldn’t trust him for shit.

Now, though, Matt’s willing to let Foggy get them where they need to go, to exist in just their little space.

Of course, that doesn’t mean some things don’t slip through.

Matt tilts his head before pulling on Foggy’s arm. 

“This way,” he says, and Foggy makes a questioning noise as they walk the wrong way across the street.

He can hear Foggy’s heartbeat picking up, so Matt puts on an easy face, trying his best to project ‘don’t worry, not a night-job thing’ through his stance.

It might work. Maybe.

They tap a couple of blocks down the street, and the pleasant scent doubles, then triples, then becomes Matt’s whole world. They turn the corner then come to a stop in front of a flower stand.

Matt pulls Foggy over to one specific bunch.

“Sniff,” he says, and he can hear Foggy’s delighted laugh as he moves to do so.

“Matt, stop,” Foggy says, in that tone of voice that clearly means ‘don’t stop, you are so sweet’. “They do smell nice. And they look really pretty, too—I don’t know what kind of flowers these are, but there’s some orange ones and a few really bright purple ones. The purple one’s have pink veins throughout.”

The lady running the stand mumbles the names of them under her breath. Matt prefers Foggy’s description more.

“Pick a bunch out,” Matt says, detaching from Foggy’s arm to pull out his wallet.

“Matt,” Foggy laments again, though he reaches out to touch the flowers. Then he pauses, turning back to Matt.

“Are you sure you can handle these?”

For you? Definitely.

“Maybe not in the office,” Matt admits. Far too small, far too enclosed, and he does actually have to get work done. “But maybe on your kitchen table?”

He grabs a few bills from his wallet, unfolding them and passing them to the stand-owner. The young woman thanks him, and Matt waves off the change, even though he probably can’t really afford to do that.

“In the living room,” Foggy says decisively, pulling the bunch out of the bucket they’re in. The plastic wrapped around them crinkles loudly, and a burst of their smell bubbles further into the air. “Under the window so they can get light.”

“Sounds nice,” Matt says, nodding. Then he remembers that they don’t have a lot of free hands between the two of them. “Here, let me carry something.”

“Nope, I’ve got it,” Foggy says, even as he blatantly struggles to balance everything.

“Foggy, come on,” Matt says, making grabs for the flowers. Foggy tilts sideways, more flexible than expected, his back forming what seems like a semi-decent crescent moon-pose.

“Hell no, I said I’ve got it,” he argues.

Matt lets his cane fall to rest against his leg, leaning in and using his height advantage to reach over Foggy’s head.

Admittedly, this doesn’t work out so great.

Matt gets a hand on the bouquet, but Foggy’s vice-gripping it like he’s a desperate bridesmaid making the catch at the wedding flower-toss. The plastic sounds like hell, and he can hear the stems just barely starting to crack and squish.

Meanwhile, the unnecessary take-out (‘really, it’s diner food, Foggy, should we even bother?’) teeters and totters on Foggy’s open palm, literal moments away from going splat.

Not willing to sacrifice the flowers he just bought for him, Matt’s about ready to give in when suddenly:

“Um, sirs,” the stand-owner says with a snort. “I have a bag, if you need one?”

They freeze in place for a moment, probably looking like rivals in an intense round of twister, before they simultaneously pull apart, Foggy straightening up and regaining control over the take-out, and Matt smoothing over his shirt to act just a bit more composed than he currently is.

“Oh, a bag would be great, thanks,” Foggy says, voice neutrally-polite aside from a breathy laugh towards the end.

Foggy moves to accept the plastic bag from the lady (and Matt’s pretty sure it held her lunch at one point, since it smells faintly like ham and cheese), and Matt somehow convinces him to let him carry the now-bagged take-out.

Foggy still refuses to relinquish the flowers, which is actually pretty sweet, no matter how annoying the stubbornness is in the moment.

So the walk home is wholesome and romantic, like Foggy said, and Matt forgets his failure for a bit.

But even as he pushes the uncertainty to the back of his mind, Matt can’t help but linger on how he cut the diner date short.

And wonder why it makes him feel so unsteady.


	2. Coffee, Mrs. Kaminski, and Clouds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Waiting until today to post was a lesson in patience.

Foggy does win at UNO, though Matt wouldn’t say he gets smoked, per say… He’s pretty sure he beats Foggy at a round or two somewhere in there, anyway.

It’s getting chilly by that point, and with some new clients lined up for the next morning, they unanimously decide to call it early, Matt heading back home with a promise of a light patrol.

He scares the shit out of three would-be muggers, stops a junked-up teen from making a terrible mistake, then interrupts what sounds like a sexual assault but turns out to be some morally-ambiguous public role-play. Blegh.

It’s at this point that Matt decides he’s done with humanity for the night, and he heads home, thankfully having managed to avoid any embarrassing facial injuries this time.

Following one sandwich, two glasses of water, and what could very well be a world record for the fastest shower known to man, he flops down into bed and conks out almost immediately.

Of course, his body refuses to take the sleep given to it. He wakes up some hours later with that unsettled feeling that comes from the gray-space between dream and nightmare.

After slapping the clock in panic, he lets out a breath, thankfully not late, just waking an hour and change earlier than intended.

But that’s fine. He spends a little extra time than usual on prayer and meditates after—for long enough that he’s able to pull the world almost completely into order.

He takes an actual shower, followed by coffee and breakfast, steams his suit, and then he’s out the door.

He actually manages to be the first one there for once, a momentous occasion that really only happens once in a blue moon.

By the time Karen rolls in, the door’s been unlocked and the windows cracked; when Foggy gets there, the coffee (yes, made by Matt this time; really, not to undermine himself here, but what’s it mean when the blind guy can make better coffee than Karen?) is just finishing its first brew of the day. First of many, if Matt’s guessing correctly. Which he nearly always does.

“Honey, I’m home!” Foggy calls as he walks through the door. He closes it behind him then turns back to the office proper, and that’s when he must see Matt.

“Whoa, Matt’s here!” he exclaims. Then, because he’s Foggy, he starts up a sarcastic slow clap. “This has to be a first,” he says, inaccurately. “What’s the occasion? AC go out back home?”

Matt snorts, rolling his eyes. As if the AC here works worth a damn. “Just had an early night last night,” he says, a concealing truth.

He pours a tiny cream container into his coffee and dumps a second-worth of sugar in after.

“Good for you,” Foggy says, and the light tone of voice implies relief, relaxation. Matt needs to work on worrying him less.

The air in here is good today. It’s not often that they all enter the office feeling unburdened and ready for work.

“And based on the way Karen’s chugging her cup,” Karen proceeds to choke on her swallow, laughing. “Can I assume Matt made the coffee today?”

“Indeed,” Matt confirms, sipping from his cup. It’s sweet. It’s good.

“Well then,” Foggy says, shoes clacking against the hardwood floor as he walks over, “don’t mind if I do. Not that I don’t love Karen’s coffee just as much!” he hurries to add on.

Karen huffs a laugh.

“Actually,” she says, having another sip. “You might have a point. Matt is officially the N. & M. coffee god.”

Matt doesn’t even know where he would begin with that one. The shortening of their already reasonably-lengthed firm name? The pure blasphemy? He just doesn’t have time to unpack all that.

So he doesn’t.

“Seconded,” Foggy says, softer (read: normal-toned) because he’s next to Matt. And Foggy’s just thoughtful like that.

Matt doesn’t know how to respond, so he just makes an ‘ehh’ sound. Good enough.

Karen taps her mug down, sloshing like its only a quarter or so full, then swallows her last sip before saying, “So, Wednesday, right? We’ve got the teenager and the will-thing, right? When’s that all happening?”

“Ugh, the will-thing,” Foggy groans, setting his satchel down beside him. It doesn’t fall, so it must be rested against the cupboard.

“Yes, Mr. Drake and Mrs. Kaminski,” Matt says professionally. Internally, though, he’ll admit it: ugh. The will-thing. “We’re still waiting on Mr. Drake’s confirmation call, but I spoke with Mrs. Kaminski last night. She should be by around eleven.”

“Sounds good,” Foggy says, pouring more than a second’s-worth of sugar into his cup then filling it with coffee. “Don’t forget we’ve got court on Monday.”

“The eviction. I remember,” Matt says, sipping his coffee. He straightens up, pushing off from the counter. “I’ll go rehearse for a bit. See you in a couple hours?”

Foggy’s shampoo wafts through the air as he nods his head. “Same here. Have fun.”

“Always,” Matt says with an ironic smile. But it’s not entirely a joke; it is actually pretty fun. All of what they do is.

When it isn’t wills.

“Oh, hello, dear,” a very sweet-sounding old lady says, walking into the office hours later. “Is this Nelson and Murdock?”

“Yes, we’re—“ Karen starts, but the lady continues:

“I’m looking for the sweet boys at Nelson and Murdock.”

“Yes, ma’am, that’s us,” Karen says. And is ignored. Matt breathes a laugh in his office.

“Do you know where to find them?”

There’s a beat of quiet. Then:

“Yes, this is Nelson and Murdock—“

“Ohh,  _ this  _ is Nelson and Murdock! And who are you, sweet girl?”

The woman steps forward further into the office, letting the door fall shut behind her. She creaks over to the reception desk, dropping her bag with a clunk.

“Hello, ma’am. I’m Karen; I work for Misters Nelson and Murdock.” She’s quite professional when talking to anyone but them. “You must be Mrs. Kaminski?”

“Yes, I’m Ania Kaminski. But no more of that ‘ma’am’ nonsense; making me feel like the old lady I am.”

“Of course, Mrs. Kaminski,” Karen says. She’s clearly already won over. Foggy, too, based on:

“Mrs. Kaminski, is that your beautiful voice I’m hearing?” he asks, striding out of his office.

“Oh, mister Nelson,” Mrs. Kaminski says fondly, remembering him from when she set up her appointment a few days prior. Matt and Karen volunteered for the lunch run, leaving Foggy to handle scheduling their...kind-hearted client.

“How are you, dearest? Have you been eating well?”

“Always,” he says. “And I thought I told you to call me ‘Foggy’.”

Matt imagines Foggy shakes a jokingly-scolding finger with it. It’s something he might do.

“Are you certain you’ve been eating okay? It’s flu season, you know.”

What Foggy had the most to say on their client was that she’s a major worrier. Sounds about right. Though it’s ironic for Foggy to complain about that.

“Don’t worry, I’ve been keeping him fed,” Matt says, stepping out of his office. “Mrs. Kaminski, right? I’ve heard a lot about you. Matthew Murdock; I work with Mr. Nelson and Ms. Page.”

He sticks his hand out to shake, but Mrs. Kaminski grabs it, smacking her lips against it loudly.

Foggy and Karen fail to hide their chuckles as it happens, and Mrs. Kaminski says, “Oh, this is Matthew. I didn’t know you were blind.”

Matt never knows what to say to that one. That’s what’s got him flustered, definitely not the heart-warming hand-kiss.

“Yes,” he says, not knowing where else to take it.

“Now, you definitely aren’t eating well enough,” she says, and Matt jumps when she starts patting at his sides. She tsks as she says, “Thin, too thin. Next time I will bring some dishes. Good, hot food.”

Foggy and Karen are just leaving him out to dry.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Matt tries, face red. “Please don’t worry yourself.”

Mrs. Kaminski huffs, patting Matt’s side once more, regardless of how he twists in an attempt to evade. “Trust you not to take care of yourself. I will do it.”

He stutters a thanks, and that’s when Foggy cuts in, waving them all into the conference room to get started with the case.

His interference is appreciated, but Matt won’t soon forget how late it came.

“So, Mrs. Kaminski,” Foggy says, starting them off. “Remind us what you’re here for today, please.”

“Right,” she says, and for all the doting, she gets right down to business.

The will-thing.

So here’s what we’ve got.

The client, Mrs. Kaminski, is seeking defense against a disputed will. Her father recently passed, having made major changes to the will just days prior which left Mrs. Kaminski’s brother out. The brother is the one raising the dispute.

“It’s bullshit,” Mrs. Kaminski says, and it’d be funny to hear such words coming from her if she weren’t clearly so stressed about the whole situation. “Edmond wasn’t even in our father’s life. Da was so forgiving, but he finally came around in the end.”

Patting her hand from across the table, Foggy says, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Kaminski. We’ll get everything worked out.”

They send her off with some well-wishes then start strategizing.

—————————

They work their previous cases for a couple of days, sharing some lazy moments together in the evenings.

Even Daredevil doesn’t have much on his plate; with no major players stirring up trouble in the Kitchen, he really only needs to spend a couple hours nightly keeping the place in line and asserting his presence.

If anything, the smooth roads give him some more time to think, to come up with some ideas for how he can shake things up ‘romantic-styles’ with Foggy. It’s time that he starts making a greater effort. Matt can be exciting.

On Saturday morning, they decide on a walk in Central Park—not unusual for them. There’s a nice coffee shop in the area with delicious cappuccinos (Matt doesn’t even have to dilute his senses to say this) and house-made bagels that they like to treat themselves to after.

It’s during this walk that Matt decides he’ll make his move.

“It’s just—who does that, you know?”

Matt nods along, snorting a laugh. It’s funny because Matt wasn’t there. Truthfully, if the screeching emergency brake was pulled on his train, he’d be right pissed.

“That’s pretty odd,” he agrees.

“It happened the other week, too!” Foggy adds, swinging his left hand wildly and kicking a pebble out of their path. “There’s no way the emergency brake’s pulled twice in one month for no reason. I smell a rat.”

Matt can’t help his laugh. “You think there’s—what, some serial brake puller at large?”

If this is really the villain of the week, Matt’s job could not be easier.

“If the shoe fits,” Foggy says, shrugging.

A group of kids are tossing a football around not too far ahead, and Matt’s not looking to test his luck today.

“Wanna sit for a minute?” he asks, waving in the direction of the bench his cane’s tapping has been pinging off of.

“Sure, sounds good,” Foggy says.

Matt detaches from Foggy’s arm as they sit, and he takes a moment to just enjoy the park.

It really is a beautiful morning. The sun is still low in the sky, so the air is brisk, feeling clean in his lungs.

And without all the morning rush of a work-day, most passersby sound calm and relaxed, sipping on coffee and tasting muffins with what feels like all the time in the world.

Truly, it’s a good day. Foggy bumps his shoulder and Matt bumps back with a smile. They don’t feel the need to speak; the quiet between them is natural and easy.

Then Matt ruins it.

“We should go bowling,” he blurts out, before he can come up with a segway into the topic. “I mean—not right now. But soon.”

There’s a half-pause before Foggy says: “I am making the weirdest face right now. Bowling? Have you ever even bowled before?”

Uh, once? It was for one of Matt’s birthdays when he was younger. So a good memory. Maybe not a half-bad idea. Of course, he was still sighted then. Hmm...

“Yeah, I’ve bowled before,” he says. “I just realized that it’s been a while,” a long while, “and we’ve never gone together before.”

Foggy hums suspiciously, so Matt puts on Innocent Face #2. This one always got him out of hot water back in college.

“I suppose that’s true,” Foggy says slowly. “I guess I just didn’t think you’d have fond memories of bowling.”

It takes Matt a moment to connect it, but—ohh… His face grows red as he remembers one of their first clients together. Accused murder.

With a bowling ball.

Oops.

“I just think it’s worth a go, is all,” Matt says, twisting his cane in his hand. “We can do something else if it’ll be an issue.”

Foggy leans back against the bench, hair brushing the back of it as he tilts his head up. 

There’s a moment of deliberating pause. Then Matt leans back with him. He asks quietly: “What are you seeing?” Setting his cane against the side of the bench, he lets his hands rest beside him.

“The clouds look nice,” Foggy tells him. Matt hums. “They’re an off-white, like it might rain in the next couple of days, and they’re moving pretty quickly.”

That much makes sense. Matt can hear the wind moving east overhead and around them. And with the way the sun gets blotted out every now and then, he had to assume precipitation.

“See any shapes?” Matt asks, startling a laugh out of Foggy. Matt grins.

“Let’s see,” Foggy says, stalling. There’s a second of quiet before he chuckles, saying, “Alright. There's a snow-man-looking fellow right…” He nudges Matt’s left hand before picking it up to point. “Right about there. What is that, North-west? I suck at directions.”

Very true. It’s funny how the sighted one in the relationship is the one who gets them lost all the time.

“North-west,” Matt confirms with a nod. He intertwines his fingers with Foggy’s, pulling it down to their sides. “Is there a top-hat?”

Foggy sighs sadly, saying, “Tragically, there’s no top-hat.”

Matt shakes his head in faux-mourning. “How unfortunate,” he says, playing along.

“Super off-brand,” Foggy agrees. “Hmm, that one straight ahead looks a bit like a pirate ship. You know, like a ship-wrecked one,” he adds with a shrug.

Then Foggy bumps his shoulder into Matt’s and squeezes his hand. “What about on your end? What strange secrets of the world is Matt picking up on?”

Matt snorts a laugh, rolling his eyes. At this point, Foggy has to be misconstructing Matt’s abilities on purpose.

Really, Matt wasn’t paying attention, so he releases his focus, letting his senses balloon outwards. People, cars, pastries, cats. What would Foggy want to hear about?

Matt shifts to point with his right hand. He lets himself look as bemused as he feels when he says: “There is...some kind of animal digging around over there. Like—a mole, or something.”

He can feel the heat of Foggy’s mouth dropping open. “Woah, cool!” he says, pushing to sit up and get a closer look. 

“It’s under-ground,” Matt says, head tracking the vague direction it took off to. He thought it was a water-line at first. It’s always odd when one of those diggy-animals comes through.

“Yo, there he is!” Foggy exclaims, detaching his hand from Matt’s to point. Must be a habit.

“Matt, this is amazing. You should’ve done animal control or something.”

“Imagine how much money I would have saved, too,” Matt adds, shrugging with both hands near his head in a ‘what can you do’-sort of way. 

They laugh together as Foggy leans back again, Matt shaking his head in good-humor.

“Bowling sounds like a blast,” Foggy says, once their laughter subsides. “I feel like it’ll be either amazing or terrible, with no in-between.”

Matt’s sure it will be a good time. Hopefully.

“Think we should invite Karen, too?” Matt asks. Either way works, really. Karen seems to make things more fun wherever she goes, so she would probably help to smooth over the whole event.

“That would be great,” Foggy says, turned to face Matt. He links his hand back to Matt’s, and Matt smiles.

They sit in silence, just enjoying one another’s company. Then Matt hears Foggy’s stomach growl.

With a chuckle, Matt says, “I’m starting to get hungry. Bagel time?”

“Bagel time,” Foggy confirms.

So everything is going great. The plan’s working out so far. Now Matt just has to prepare himself for some bowling. Should be easy enough, right?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anybody notice the ‘stirring up trouble in the Kitchen’ bit? Because I lost my mind laughing when I first noticed I wrote that. Also, I don’t know if there’s moles in NYC. Whatever, bro. There’s human-mutates like Matt in this universe, I really don’t think the one-off mole line will kill the story. Ahaha.  
Hope you guys enjoyed. I’m going to be posting weekly updates for the next little bit here, so look forward to that. Please feel free to drop a comment if you have the chance. It would really make my day :D  
(P.S., get excited for chapter three. It slaps.)


	3. Let's Go Bowling!

_ So, bowling. Should be easy enough, right? _

Well, yes and no. After some intense Googling and one quick scout of the place a few days before, Matt thinks he’s adequately prepared.

And he is! You know, mostly.

Foggy’s beside him, either anxious or excited, based on his breathing and heart-rate. Matt has to assume the latter when Foggy finishes recounting his story of the last time he went bowling, saying, “Wow, I can’t believe how long it’s been.”

“Longer for me,” Matt relates as they approach the door. “I was still sighted, last I went.”

“So, what, you were like seven? Six?”

“Seven,” Matt says. But wait, that’s not quite right, is it? “Wait, now that I think about it, there was this one time at Saint Agnes.”

There’s a beat and Foggy says, “I am raising my eyebrows so high.” He holds the door for Matt to pass through, and Matt makes for the desk he remembers from his visit the other day.

“I’ll fill you in later,” Matt tells him before turning back to the desk.

“Hey, welcome in,” the man running the desk says.

“Good afternoon,” Matt says. “We have a lane reserved for two-fifteen under Murdock.”

A couple of wordless seconds pass by with the man humming.

“There we are,” he says, likely having checked the schedule. “Lane nine. And it’s for three?”

“Just two, now,” Matt says. Karen has a prior engagement, unfortunately.

“That’s fine,” the man says, and his heartbeat says that he truly doesn’t give a shit. “You guys want the bumpers up?”

Matt smirks. “We’re good for now, but thanks.”

“Okay. Let me know if you change your mind. And if the third shows up, just come and see us—er...”

Matt holds back his smirk, choosing to say, “Great, thanks.” Sighted people just don’t know how to interact. Simple as that.

“Yeah. The lanes are down the stairs on your right, and the lane you have reserved is the one on the far end. Want someone to walk you guys down?”

“No, I think we’ll be fine,” Foggy says, choosing the words right from Matt’s mouth.

“Great. Have fun, guys.”

“We will, thanks,” Matt says, gesturing with one hand for Foggy to take the lead. He doesn’t want to look like he’s too familiar with this bowling alley, even though he kind of is.

That is, he didn’t hardcore stalk the place, but he did investigate it as both Murdock and Daredevil a few days back. At this point, he knows the layout down to the basement’s empty cellar that even the owners might not know is there.

They walk down the steps and towards the desk that smells like mothballs and a thousand feet. Matt does his best to just focus on himself and Foggy. They get their shoes then walk down to the far end of the room. This was deliberate.

With one side to the wall, Matt’s going to have to handle hearing all the conversations to his left echoing back on his right, but at least it won’t feel like he’s drowning in an ocean.

Crowds are not so fun sometimes.

They sit down on the curved bench in front of the lane to lace up and Foggy starts describing.

“So, at your one-o’clock is the ball return. I don’t know if you remember, but once you get your ball down the lane, it falls through the back and gets sucked back through to here.”

Matt has faint memories. This little refresher definitely helps. He nods along to show he’s listening and Foggy continues:

“There’s a rack of balls behind us—please hold your ball jokes—“ Matt snorts. He was wondering when the first one would come. “But we’ll worry about that in a minute. The shoe your wearing is a nice tan color with red accenting. Very appropriate.”

“No idea what you mean,” Matt says flatly. Foggy snorts a laugh.

“Right, right. Balls?”

“Balls.”

They make their way over, Matt leaving his cane for convenience and choosing to have Foggy guide him instead.

“There’s three short steps—there ya go. The ball rack is about three steps in front of us.”

Matt starts picking up and putting down a couple, going for the most comfortable find and ultimately settling on:

“Purple, nice,” Foggy says. “I chose a melon-green one for myself. Ready?”

Matt smirks, maybe a little nervous. “Let’s do this.”

He gestures for Foggy to go first, setting his own ball on the rack. He sits on the bench, wiping his palms on his pants. He’s going to bowl and he’s going to like it, damn it.

Matt focuses in on Foggy, trying to see what’s going on. He hears the ball pound the floor then CRASH into the pins. Oh, Christ!

Shit, he didn’t mean to think that. Sorry, blasphemy. He crosses himself and comes back to himself with Foggy’s laughter.

“Did you just bless yourself?” he asks. “You better keep praying, Matty, boy; I just knocked down half the board. Now I get one more try and then it’s your turn.”

Matt nods, smiling in spite of the pounding of his head. That’s fine. He’ll focus a little less this time. He jumps when the next group over shouts. A strike.

He lets out a breath when Foggy knocks over a few more of his pins. Not all of them, it would seem, based on the affronted breath he lets out.

“I got all of ‘em but one, Matt,” Foggy says. “I’m shaking my head, but not out of shame for myself. It’s to shame that pin. Not a team-player.”

“So rude of him,” Matt agrees jokingly as he gets up. “There any steps?”

“No, but the floor’s kinda slippy, so watch for that.”

Noted.

He grabs his ball the moment before Foggy’s comes back up, pulling his hand out of the way at the last second. Then he steps forward, walking up until Foggy says quietly:

“Okay, that’s good. Try not to go further than that or you’ll be in the lane.”

Matt flashes him a thumbs-up then gets his grip on the ball, holding it through the holes and trying to get a sense of what he’s doing.

He has vague memories of this. His dad’s laughter, his dad’s smile, his dad, his dad, his dad. But in terms of imagery, he supposes he kind of knows what he’s looking at.

He taps his foot against the ground to better gauge the distance then dips into each gutter to feel for where they are.

To be completely transparent, Matt’s not quite sure how long the lane is. He read that they’re usually 50-75-ish feet, so he goes based off of that.

He steps back, aims for what feels like the middle, and let’s loose.

Turns out it’s a bit shorter than he expected. At least he’s prepared for the crash this time.

“Holy shit, Matt!” Foggy exclaims, and for a second Matt’s worried that he broke something before Foggy laughs. “That was actually amazing. You have a split right now, which means you took out most of them except two on the right and one on the left.”

Matt nods, honestly sort of pleased with himself. “And I go one more time, right?”

“Yup, but hold on for the metal thing to get out of the way.”

Matt knows about the metal thing. It’s impossible not to smell it. Figuring that bit out was one of the first steps in his research.

He hits one of the pins on the right with his last throw, ending it in a “seven-ten split,” according to Foggy.

They go for a few more rounds, Matt learning what a spare is through his improvement, while Foggy stays at about the same skill-level. They throw some taunts and jabs, but it’s all in good fun.

And that’s what it is: fun. His head is twinging from the constant crashing around them, and it smells a little disgusting without any windows, but it’s challenging and exciting and new.

Once they’re about a quarter-way through their set, Foggy finally prompts, “So St. Agnes? I’m told there’s a story there.”

Matt huffs a laugh, walking over to grab his ball.

“It’s really not much, so don’t get your hopes up,” Matt warns as he steps up. He performs his first throw, listens for Foggy to call out how many he got, then walks closer to Foggy, who’s hanging out near the ball return.

“As your best friend and partner, I know you’re just saying that to make it even better,” Foggy says, heart still speeding up on ‘partner’.

Matt can’t help his smile at that, both because of how sweet the implications are and because Foggy’s completely right. This is a fantastic story.

Still, he doesn’t confirm Foggy’s estimation, choosing to keep it up in the air.

“So, it all started with a kid I’ve mentioned before: Jared.”

Foggy hums, leaning against the ball return with one hand. “Jared... He was that one asshole kid, right?”

Matt nods, grabbing his ball when it comes. “That’s the one,” he says over his shoulder. It must look odd to the other families here—and isn’t that a heavy sentence, to imply that he and Foggy are a family—that Matt isn’t even looking when he bowls, but whatever. If they missed the cane coming in then that’s their problem.

He throws the ball, listening to the satisfying clatter of a spare, then swaggers back over to Foggy, just to hear him laugh.

“He really wasn’t that much of an asshole,” Matt says, just to be correct. “Maybe a bit of a trouble-maker.”

“That’s Matt for ‘asshole’,” Foggy asserts, and Matt can just shrug, because again, Foggy hit it on the head. “You may continue.”

“That’s very kind of you,” Matt says with a bow. Foggy snorts as he picks up his ball with both hands. “So, Jared, right? He was always in and out, but the last time he came to stay at Agnes happened to fall around his birthday.”

He stops for Foggy to make his first throw and holds back his cringe. Foggy’s pretty good at this game, which is great, except winning hurts when it comes to bowling. Damn pins.

“Shit, my first strike!” Foggy says, and Matt gives him a round of applause. That is actually pretty impressive. Matt’s going to have to double-down.

He pushes off the wall and collects his ball as he continues, “Jared was pretty upset about it—understandably so.”

“Seriously; away from his parents on his birthday,” Foggy emphasizes.

“Yeah, he was displeased, to say the least.”

Throw, Crash!, clatter, strong whiff of metal.

The crash is still borderline painful, but it’s growing on him—like a mold or fungus. He’s starting to associate the crash-clatter-metal with success... He’s starting to look forward to it. Bowling’s not so bad, once he gets used to it.

“So the nuns decide to take him and the rest of us kids to the bowling alley to celebrate—odd since we usually just had a yearly birthday celebration for everyone, but I guess I get it.”

“Stop.” He stops, freezing with his hands held up by his chest to be silly. He lets it go after a second, smiling, but tilts his head to show he’s listening. “Are you saying you never got your own birthday party?”

Matt shrugs. “It was an orphanage, Foggy. They aren’t exactly known for having money to spare.”

“That is so tragic.”

Of all the things Foggy could feel bad for Matt for...it’s this?

“Really it doesn’t matter,” Matt says. He grabs his ball when it comes up from the chute and steps back up. “We had fun on Birthday Day and it was enough.”

It was enough.

He throws the ball.

Crash-clatter-metal. Success.

“Birthday Day.”

Matt’s said too much.

“Am I finishing the story or what?” he asks, regaining control.

“I am raising my palms up in a ‘be my guest’ gesture.”

“Okay. So we get to the bowling alley and Jared’s still being pissy.”

“He didn’t get the memo that most kids just got Birthday Day.”

Matt huffs a laugh. “Very true.” He pauses for Foggy to make his first throw then continues, “The other kids didn’t care. They were having a blast. I didn’t know what to do, and everyone just assumed I wouldn’t play, so I sat out. Jared did, too, for the first round.”

He still remembers it well. The place smelled like pure cigarette smoke, back when smoking in buildings was still legal. The feet stench was even worse than it is here—that, or maybe Matt’s just learned to block it out better.

The violent crashing didn’t help. Good thing his fellow orphans weren’t very good with bowling. As it was, it took nearly twenty-minutes for Matt to be able to push everything out and gain his bearings.

“It’s just bullshit,” Jared said. “I should be able to see my parents. It’s my  _ birthday _ .”

Jared’s parents had their own demons. His mom was in rehab again, his dad back in jail. It was best for Jared to stay at Agnes for the time. Matt wasn’t going to say that, though.

“Yeah, it sucks,” he said instead.

“We talked for a while,” Matt continues the story, “And Jared started making a plan: he wanted to tear the place up as much as possible. Which meant it was time for me to clear out.”

Matt steps up to take his turn, and he actually manages to knock them all down.

“Shit, Matt!” Foggy exclaims. “You’re, like, really good at this.”

“Well, don’t sound so surprised,” Matt says back, jutting out his hip and putting his hand on it.

Foggy laughs. “The screen says you’re in the lead now. I have no idea how I’ll catch up.”

“I’m sure you’ll manage.” He pauses then continues: “Jared’s plan was actually pretty elaborate. And it went down perfectly.”

It started with a little sneaking around. While everyone was distracted, he slipped around the place, pulling a thread here or there. He unscrewed just one bolt on three different ball racks. He snuck into the snack bar and turned the temperature on the nacho cheese up. And he managed to find a single bouncy ball under one of the benches.

Matt relays this to Foggy.

“He really was playing the long game,” Matt pushes, because that’s what it was. “He started participating after that and acted like he was finally over his funk. The nuns were palpably relieved. It took a while for everything to start falling apart. But when it did...”

Foggy pauses where he was standing, ready to start his turn, and Matt says seriously:

“Foggy, it fell  _ apart _ .”

It started with one single ball rack. The weight of the heavy bowling balls became too much with the instability, and the top rack fell in. And bowling balls smashed to the floor, somehow managing not to completely fall through.

The two lone workers stopped their gossiping to inspect it, and while they were checking it out, Matt was the only one who could smell the cheese start to burn.

“Matt you just let it happen?” Foggy asks, laughter in his voice.

Foggy always knows the questions to ask. Matt did actually have a slight crisis over whether he should feel guilty for that or not. Ultimately, though:

He raises his hands in an innocent gesture. “I was staying out of it.” He’s too lazy to wait for his ball to come back up, so he just uses Foggy’s for his second throw. It doesn’t go too poorly. The weight difference feels weird, though.

“So the cheese was burning, but the workers were on the other side of the room. By the time they smelled it...it was too late.”

The lady ran over, and she opened up the machine. Smoke poured out, and within seconds, the sprinklers were turning on.

Water was falling everywhere, soaking the kids, soaking the nuns.

“Everyone started running around, but that just meant they were slipping everywhere.”

Just to make it better, Jared threw the bouncy ball, and it managed to roll under two different pairs of feet, knocking those kids to the ground.

“It gets better.”

Foggy’s mouth is wide open. “How can it get better?!”

“Remember those other two ball racks? The weight of the rain made them finally cave.”

It sounded like the one ended up falling completely over, sending every ball on the rack to the ground right in front of the stairway.

“Everybody was freaking out, it was chaos. And me? Well. It was Jared’s birthday.”

“What’s happening?” Matt asked, throwing on his best ‘bewildered’ face. “I can’t see, somebody tell me what’s going on!”

He could hear Jared cackling and the nuns worrying over oh, poor, blind Matthew, slipping around trying to get to him.

“Not bad, Matt,” Jared said under his breath. “Not bad.”

“Oh, Matt, you are awful,” Foggy says, laughing broadly. “This is unbelievable.”

“So that was the one and only time St. Agnes went bowling,” Matt finishes with a shrug. “I have to say, for all the trouble he caused, Jared was an interesting kid to have around.”

“I’ll say. Wow, Matt, what a story. Can’t believe you held off on that one this whole time.”

Matt laughs. “I genuinely forgot it happened. Ah, good times.”

“Alright, it’s the last round,” Foggy says. “You’re in the lead, but we’re about tied. Loser buys dinner?”

Matt smirks. “Oh, you are on.”

The last round works a bit differently. Matt remembers reading about that in his research. They get three turns this time, but only if they get a strike or a spare.

Foggy gets a spare.

Matt manages a strike and then a spare. Their crowd of two goes wild. Matt holds his hand up for a high-five, and they’re both grinning hugely.

Bowling is great. Foggy’s laughter puts Matt on cloud nine. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love this chapter. Next week we'll get into some bigger plot points--though there'll be some wholesome moments, too. Lemme know what you guys think of this chapter :D


	4. The Search for Nurse Joyce / Road Trip Part 1

So, the bowling date went well. Like—really well, actually. Quite well. Matt’s not one to gloat or celebrate his success too often, but this one... Let’s just say he’s patted his back more than once since.

The best part was that bowling was actually genuinely fun. It goes to show that pushing himself can really pay off.

They’ve just about wrapped up the cases they’ve been working through—from here, it’s going to mostly just be the formalities of court—so they hone in on Mrs. Kaminski’s case, starting to line up the witnesses and statements that they need.

“Anyone heard from Mr. Drake?” Karen pipes up on Monday morning.

They’re all standing around the coffee pot, mugs in hands and waiting for it to stop dripping. Matt was appointed coffee duties again today. It’s looking like that might become the new norm. Matt’s perhaps more pleased with it than he should be.

What he’s not pleased with:

Foggy coughs, saying, “Oh, you mean Mr. Flake? Nope, nothing.”

“He said he would be in Friday, but that obviously never happened,” Karen adds.

“I got a text,” Matt pipes up. “He claims he’ll be in around 12:30 on Wednesday.”

“I guess we’ll see about that,” Foggy says, and Matt shrugs.

“If he ditches again, we can just go out for lunch. Figured this way it’s a win-win.”

“I like the way you think,” Foggy says, raising his mug with a ceramic whistle. Karen dings hers against his, and Matt raises his own up to get in on the action.

They dink his cup and they’re all laughing as the coffee pot bubbles beside them.

————————

The first step in Mrs. Kaminski’s case is getting some information on the last will. Best case scenario, they get into contact with her father’s lawyer and everything is sorted out in a tizzy. Worst... Well, Matt can’t even think about that.

It is not, evidently, the best case scenario. But it’s also not the worst.

“He wrote his last will in hospice,” Mrs. Kaminski told them the week before.

“Were there any witnesses?” Foggy asked, because apparently the will is with her brother, Edmond’s, lawyer. So the second order of business is speaking with him.

“Two: myself and a nurse.”

So, one. They needed to get in contact with the nurse. Sounds easy enough.

One thing Matt’s learning is that things are almost never as easy as they should be.

“Nurse Joyce?” The front desk-man says. “She’s on maternity leave.”

“That’s fine,” Matt says, internally groaning. “Is there a number we can use to get in contact?”

“Hmm, I’m not supposed to give out coworkers’ numbers...”

“Could you give her my number, then? My partner and I really need to speak with her.”

The man seems to hesitate, for reasons unknown. Thankfully, he texts her then and there, and Foggy gets a call within the hour.

“That’s awesome,” Matt says, hanging his coat on Nelson & Murdock (and Page)’s new coat-rack. He only now finally got back from his little adventure at the hospice, and he’s officially reached his limit for the day. The subway is an awful place.

At least this is some good news.

Matt continues: “Is Ms. Joyce available to meet soon?”

Foggy sucks a breath in through his teeth and Matt pauses.

“So, we’ve hit a slight road-block,” Foggy says. “Just a teensy one. She’s available to speak, but she’s on maternity leave.”

“I heard that,” Matt says, “what’s the problem?”

“She’s with her family in Pennsylvania.”

Uuuuuugh. It’s inconvenient, for sure, but what is that, a day-trip? Matt hasn’t left the city since he was a kid.

“Video call?” Matt tries with a smile. What’s the app, FaceTime?

“I am rolling my eyes. She says she doesn’t want video evidence of her.”

Matt’s eyebrows draw together. “Then there won’t be? That’s not how it works.”

A burst of air breezes over as Foggy waves his arms around. “You try explaining it to her, then! She says she’s only comfortable with a face-to-face meeting.”

Because of course.

Matt opens his mouth, but Foggy cuts in, “Karen claims she has a test this week.” Matt closes his mouth.

Karen’s enrolled in a paralegal program, at the cost of the firm. They’re quite proud of her... Though Matt’s pretty sure she’s bullshitting them on this one. Well-played.

They’re quiet for a second, Matt letting the information sink in.

“So,” he says finally, a smirk across his face. “Road-trip?”

He hears Foggy laugh back. “Road-trip.”

————————

Look, do they both have to go? No, not really. But is this a pretty good excuse to get Foggy on a little together-adventure? Yes. It is.

And if he gets Foggy off his back about the whole ‘vacation’ thing, at least for a little while, then that’s all the better.

“I’m just saying, we both work, like...a lot.”

Matt shrugs in his seat. He turns his head to face towards Foggy, but he’s still focusing outside the window of their little rental car. Being in a car is funny because everything passes by so fast. Sometimes a quick ‘moo’ of a cow will blur by, and Matt is forced to hold in his laughter.

“I’m pretty sure we worked more in school,” Matt points out, and Foggy’s sigh means he knows Matt’s right.

“True, but we also got school breaks then. We’ve been doing this for—what, like two-and-a-half years?”

Matt nods. A week over two-and-a-half. Yes, he remembers that. No, it’s not weird.

“I just think that with everything we could use a vacation, is all.”

‘Everything’ likely refers to Daredevil. Matt will never forgive himself for the stress the job causes Foggy. It’s necessary work, but he never intended to drag Foggy down with him.

He tries not to dwell on all of that.

“Maybe,” he says, not effectively agreeing nor disagreeing. “I guess I just don’t see a convenient time for it.”

“That’s the thing,” Foggy says, voice rising. “We have to make the time for it. We can afford it.”

Matt knows they can afford it. The firm’s not exactly high-name or well-off, but they keep afloat. They no longer work paycheck-to-paycheck like they did at the beginning.

Matt’s quiet, so Foggy continues: “I’m really not talking a long thing. Just a few days, man.”

Shrugging, Matt says, “A few days would probably work.”

“The cringe on your face says otherwise.”

The cringe intensifies then Matt wipes it away.

“What’s wrong?” Foggy asks. His right hand comes away from the steering wheel to hold Matt’s hand. Matt squeezes back. “Tell me what’s eating at you.”

Matt pushes his lips together for a moment, weighing the pros and cons of telling him. He ultimately caves:

“I’m just nervous. About being away from the city for long.”

Foggy’s quiet for a moment, his heartbeat giving away nothing. He pulls a breath in through his nose after a second, though, and he says, “So, to be clear: this isn’t just an unfamiliar-place anxiety-thing, right? It’s a Daredevil-thing?”

“It’s a me-thing,” Matt counters easily. But he gives in after a second, confirming: “But yeah, I guess you could say it’s...Daredevil-related.”

Foggy nods along, hair swishing and pulling against the headrest of his seat.

“Okay,” he says, and Matt’s expecting an argument. Not a fight, but a discussion. He’s expecting Foggy to criticize this. Instead: “We’ll work that out. What are you thinking for lunch?”

Matt blinks.

Then he smiles. “...I heard Wendy’s brought back their spicy chicken nuggets.”

Laughing, Foggy says, “You’re just saying that for me.”

“What can I say? They grew on me,” Matt says with a shrug.

“I’m gonna call bull,” Foggy says, intuition on-point. “You put up with them for me—which I appreciate greatly, but let’s go somewhere we both can enjoy. Like an actual restaurant or something.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for the signs.”

“I’m rolling my eyes, but you have a point. Tell you what: we’ll keep driving for a minute, then we’ll go to the third restaurant I see a sign for. No matter what it is.”

“Fogs, I love you, but that sounds like an awful idea.”

“Or an amazing one!” Foggy throws air around the car with a whish as he gestures one-handedly—terrifying since his right hand is still held in Matt’s left. “Who knows; we might find a gem.”

Doubtful. But:

Matt raises one palm up. “I say this is a recipe for disaster. But, hey, why the hell not?”

There are plenty of reasons why not. They do it anyway.

Thanks be to God, though, they end up at a Texas Roadhouse, which, while nowhere that Matt’s been before, is at least a restaurant he’s heard of.

By the time they make it near the Joyce-family farm in Nowheresville, Pennsylvania, it’s already nearing dinner time, and with momma and baby both ready for a nap, Foggy and Matt both decide they should wait ‘till morning to meet with her.

“So,” Foggy says, drawing out the word. “Now what?”

Good question. Back when they thought they would get there on time, they freed up the whole day. It’s barely past five at this point.

Shrugging one shoulder, Matt smirks, saying, “I don’t know; what do you wanna do today?”

“I’m rolling my eyes. This is no time for Spongebob references. I’m tired of driving. First order of business: coffee.”

Matt actually feels kinda bad for that, though obviously there’s nothing to be done.

“I’ll drive us home,” he jokingly offers, and Foggy snorts a laugh.

“That is not how I’m going out, Murdock.”

If it’s up to Matt, he’ll never ‘go out’. Ever.

Anyway.

Matt breathes in and pauses. “Okay,” he says. “There’s what smells like a coffee and pastry shop a little bit forward and to the right of here.”

“What, so turn right?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

Foggy turns right.

“Matt, are you sure?” he asks after a few seconds of driving. “I’m not seeing anything.”

Matt frowns. He breathes deeper, focusing hard this time. The smell practically slams into him. “Woah...Yeah, it’s around here.”

“I just don’t see it,” Foggy says, voice high-pitched and sing-songy, as if he’s truly singing ‘you’re wrong, Matty’.

“Yeah, it’s definitely—ugh, you just passed it. Turn around.”

“No way, I didn’t see anything.”

“Well, you weren’t looking hard enough. Turn around.”

“I’m rolling my eyes.”

Well, whatever. Matt is, too.

Nonetheless, Foggy turns around.

“Oh, sick!” he says after a couple of moments. “I totally see it now. Thanks, ya bloodhound.”

“You only love me for my nose,” Matt jokes, just to hear Foggy’s huff of laughter.

“Obviously that’s not true,” Foggy says, monotoned in a high voice like it’s a set-up. “The sex is also fantastic.”

Matt chokes on his spit, and he ends up coughing as Foggy cackles beside him.

He parks after a second, saying, “Okay, there’s nobody beside us. Don’t worry about hitting anything when you get out.”

Nice.

They step out of the car and onto the sidewalk then pass through the jingling door. The coffee place is hidden, tucked away in the middle of a short row of shops. Matt smells paper and pine cones, so he imagines one of them must be a craft shop, and the unmistakeable sugar-smell easily pings out a candy store.

“Oh, this place is adorable,” Foggy says. The coffee shop is small but clean, with what smells like some older books lined along the wall to their right.

The floorboards are creaky, and there’s a bit of a musty air to the place, but the coffee smells fresh and appetizing. Don’t mind if he does.

“¡Hola! Welcome!” a sweet sounding woman calls to them. Matt smiles.

“Hola. ¿Cómo está usted?”

“Ah, ¡Ustedes hablan español! Bueno, ven, ven.”

Ms. Carla, as they come to learn her name is, is a very sweet Guatemalan lady who opened this shop with her sister over a decade ago. They’re a lot like Matt and Foggy’s business, actually: small but mighty, and keeping afloat.

“I caught ‘avocado’,” Foggy mumbles under his breath some minutes later, a laugh on his tongue. He’s since walked away from the conversation to study the wall—there likely are some paintings or photographs hanging up, since nobody finds it weird that Foggy’s staring at blank space.

Ms. Carla and Matt may or may not be talking about him in their Spanish conversation.

“Lawyers at your own firm,” Ms. Carla says, “very impressive. And you’ve known each other for how long?”

“About seven years,” Matt responds. He hones back in to Foggy, hearing him hum over some portrait or another, and smiles. He considers before he adds, “We’ve been dating for almost a year, now.”

“Ah, you’re partners!” Ms. Carla says. She combines the two words into one, saying: “Bis-romance-partners.”

Matt bursts into laughter at that, and he hears Foggy chuckle in response to it across the room.

Matt repeats the combination back to her. “I guess you could say that. I know they say to never date your work-partner, but it’s worked out well for us...he means a lot to me.”

“I know you mean a lot to him, too. You’re blind to it, but when you laugh he looks to you.”

Matt’s heart flutters then. “Does he really?”

“Mmhm,” Ms. Carla says, patting his cheek. “Sweet as honey, you two.” She continues in English, saying, “Now, let me quit prattling on. Señor Nelson, Señor Murdock, please, how do you like your coffee?”

Ms. Carla makes cappuccinos to rival their Saturday morning cups. A cube of sugar in Matt’s and two in Foggy’s makes them just the perfect amount sweet for them.

“Gracias, Señora Carla,” Matt says, continuing in English, “This is delicious. How much do I owe you?”

“Nonsense, nonsense,” Ms. Carla says. “For friends, no price.”

“Come now—“

“Tell you what,” Ms. Carla says in Spanish, “You keep your love close and we’ll call it even.”

One thing Matt learned about her is her ex-husband. She regrets their inability to work things out—even though by the sound of things, he was the jerk in the relationship. Still, he can’t help but think...

“Gracias, Señora Carla. We really appreciate it.”

Foggy says his own charming words, and thankfully Matt’s not the only one who gets his cheek pinched.

“Well, she was super sweet,” Foggy says as they exit the shop. The walk down the sidewalk, side-by-side even though the coffees mean they can’t hold onto each other. “What were you guys talking about? I heard my name.”

“We were talking about you,” Matt confirms, making it sound worse than it was. “Lots of secrets shared. Should’ve been there.”

“Gasp!” Foggy says instead of just gasping. “Matthew! Who thought you’d be such a gossip.”

Matt laughs. “No, we really didn’t say anything crazy. I told her about us and the firm. I learned about how she came to start the shop.”

“Up, beat you there. The one wall had some photographs, and one of them showed the progression of the place.”

“Yeah? That’s really neat.”

Foggy hums. “Hey, should we bring back a souvenir for Karen?”

“What, like a key-chain?”

“First of all, that would be hilarious. Second, no, I meant more like the candy shop we just passed.”

Matt smirks. “I like the way you think.”

Whatever he was considering earlier is dropped for more important candy matters.

Minutes later...

“Literally what in the world are you talking about?” Foggy asks, gesturing wildly with his free hand. Really, the wind from it feels like a ceiling fan. Cool it, Fogs. “If you think Karen doesn’t have chocolate energies, you are out of your mind.”

“Chocolate energies? Foggy, are you even hearing yourself?”

Foggy groans. “You’re trying to psyche me out. I won’t take it back. I’m right.”

“You’re not right.” And Matt has proof; more often than not, Karen comes in smelling like fruit gum. She’s clearly a skittles type of girl. Lowly, he continues, “Which of us has the super-senses here?”

Foggy wheezes his laughter, clearly caught off guard. “What?” he asks, matching Matt’s volume. “You’re gonna play the superhero card? Now, of all times?”

Matt shrugs. “If you don’t believe me, ask Karen.”

“Yeah, why don’t we just do that.”

He texts Karen.

Matt wins.

Pennsylvania isn’t so bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s chapter four! It lacks subtlety in a couple spots there, but you guys get what I’m going for. Overall, I’m pretty happy with how this story’s coming along. Hope you guys are enjoying it, too :D


	5. Road Trip Part 2 / Apple-Picking Adventure

Later that night, Matt tosses and turns, unable to sleep. It’s quiet away from the city. Sure, the building is alight with conversations and snores and sex, but outside? Nothing. It’s blank space.

It’s jarring.

For once in his life, it’s too quiet.

And worsened all the more by the way Matt can’t stop thinking about Ms. Carla.

“My ex-husband, Ricardo, and I started as business-partners,” she said. “Like you and your Foggy. Before my sister, María, and I moved shop here, Ricardo and I started it back in Guatemala.”

“So you’ve owned the shop for—“

“Fifteen years, yes,” Ms. Carla said. And isn’t that quite the goal for him and Foggy to have.

Except:

“I thought everything was okay. Then one night I woke up and he wasn’t there. All of his stuff, gone.”

Matt’s mouth dropped open. “He just—“

“He just left. There was a letter where he explained things. Apparently he found a younger woman to run away with.”

“Well that’s not your fault,” Matt tried. “By the sound of things, he was the one with the issue.”

“That’s what María always says. You know, we have a saying in Spanish: you don’t leave a known trail for a paved road. You know what it means?”

“I think I can take a guess.”

She shrugged, though her face was pained still. “He didn’t know that, I suppose.” But then she straightened up, brushing her hands on her sides. “But enough of that. It’s in the past.”

Matt shakes his head, pushing to sit up. He holds his head in his hands for a moment, rubbing his eyes. Sleep just isn’t happening right now.

He remembers the receptionist mentioning a 24-hour gym somewhere in the hotel, so he slides out of bed, careful not to wake Foggy.

It’s a good thing he brought some walking shoes. And that he sleeps in sweatpants.

It’s been an hour or two since Foggy fell asleep, so it probably won’t matter if Matt finds the fitness center on his own. He grabs the keycard on his way out, feeling the braille on the door sign to be sure he remembers the room he’s in, then follows the smell of sweat.

He ends up at a room down the hall, unfortunately: the room which he’s been blocking out auditorially for a grand part of the evening. Not having it in him to gag at the implications, he sighs then tries again without fanfare.

He takes some stairs down to the ground floor, cane echoing in the metal room, then through a door into a carpeted hallway. After just a few steps straight, he feels his way into a doorway, and the braille of the sign tells him he’s found the ‘fym’, which he’s assuming should say ‘gym’. He rolls his eyes but moves on, appreciating that they at least tried.

The fym can hardly be called such, barely the same size as the room Foggy and him are sharing, but it’s empty in the middle of the night, and it seems pretty well-stocked.

Matt feels around the room, getting a sense of the equipment in here, then starts on the treadmill, running until he’s out of breath then a few minutes more.

The thing is, he knows that he’s being stupid. Foggy is nothing like Ricardo must have been. There’s no way he would up and leave like that—he’s proven himself time and time again. If he were leaving, he would have after the Nobu fiasco, right?

He hits the elliptical next, working until the burn in his calves and quads becomes distracting and his lungs are sore.

And the thing is, Matt feels guilty for even having to think about any of this. Foggy deserves this most basic trust. What is wrong with him?

There’s a rack of dumbbells on the other end of the room, so Matt steps over to there, testing out different sets until he finds one that’ll do.

But even if Foggy won’t up and leave—Matt does trust him not to do that. He does—wouldn’t it be even worse the other way around? If Foggy suffered, bored in their relationship, never able to feel fulfilled?

Matt grabs some cleaning spray and paper towels from their spot beside the door and wipes down the equipment.

So, it’s decided. He’ll keep doing what he’s doing to keep things fresh and fun and trust Foggy to play his part. He lets out a breath and smiles. Everything will turn out fine.

He walks back to the room, where Foggy is still sleeping soundly, and somehow manages to figure out the shower situation without too much run-around.

When he finally collapses into bed, rolling Foggy back onto his side then scooching close himself, he falls asleep almost immediately.

And it is one of the best sleeps he's had in years.

————————

"Matt. Matt."

He hums, though still not fully conscious yet.

"Matt, hun, you gotta get up. Check out's in an hour."

This time it's some part hum but mostly groan.

Foggy laughs, rubbing a hand down Matt's back. "I know," he says. "I didn't wanna wake you, but I know you wanna shower before meeting with Ms. Joyce."

"Ugh."

There's quiet for a second, and Matt nearly drops off again. Nearly.

Foggy huffs a laugh then demands, "Up. Or I'm gonna start shaking you.

Noooooooo.

Matt's eyes open—for all the good it does—and his face scrunches up. "Don't do that. I'm up."

"Are you, though?"

Matt rolls his eyes but pushes to sit up. "Thanks for letting me sleep in," he says as he rubs the sleep out of his eyes.

"Don't worry about it. You looked like you were enjoying yourself."

Matt rubs the drool out of the corner of his mouth. The sign of a truly good sleep.

"Anyway," Foggy continues, "You start getting ready. I'm gonna get some crappy complimentary breakfast from downstairs."

"Ngh, wait," Matt says, moving to sit on the edge of the bed. "C'mere."

He reaches up, pulling Foggy down for a kiss. They share a heartfelt moment and then:

"Your morning breath is really gross," Foggy mumbles against his lips.

Laughing, Matt pushes him away. "Bring me a muffin?"

Foggy tousles Matt's hair with a laugh, saying, "Sure thing, bud." He steps away, picking up the plastic keycard from the side-table. "Hot water's the knob on the right, by the way."

Matt doesn't mention that he already figured that one out, giving him a mock salute in thanks. Then he sets to getting ready.

————————

“Please, go ahead and take a seat.”

Matt lets Foggy guide him down onto a couch. The Joyce-family farmhouse is cozy and warm, the couch warn but comfortable.

Ms. Joyce continues, “Thank you for making the drive out here. I hope the trip is treating you well.”

“Not a problem at all,” Foggy says. He raises his hands to gesture as he continues, “Congratulations! Your baby is beautiful.”

“Aw, isn’t she?” Ms. Joyce says then makes some soft noises to the baby girl in her arms.

She’s quiet for a moment and then she says: “Alright. So here’s the deal,” cutting to the root of the matter and bouncing baby in her arms. It’s tiny heartbeat is possibly the cutest thing in the world. “I was the main nurse for Kaminski, as you probably know.”

Matt and Foggy both nod, and Foggy sits back on the couch.

“He was...difficult, at times. He had a tendency to lose his mind a little, like all the others, basically.” She sits up then, continuing, “But when it came to family, he was always lucid. It was amazing, really.” She hushes the baby when she makes some small coos, and he hears Foggy’s heart skip a beat from the cuteness. “It’s like, he’d be flipping his shit—so to speak—but the second we mention his kids or late wife: boom. It’s like he’d snap back to us.”

“So what you’re saying...” Matt starts, nudging her along but not leading her anywhere.

“Look, he clearly wasn’t all there, but he also wasn’t all gone. I think he was ‘sound of mind’, or whatever you want to call it. He knew what he was doing.”

Matt jots this down in his braille note-taker, hearing Foggy do the same with pen and paper.

This is good stuff. They can work with this. With a couple statements from the other nurses, and once Karen obtains a copy of the will, this case should be in the bag.

Was it worth the drive out here? Well.

The baby coos again, and Matt swears his heart will explode.

Yeah. It’s worth it.

————————

They pull as much information out of Ms. Joyce as they can, from the obviously useful to the mundane, loath to drive back here again, no matter how okay the trip has been so far. She’s surprisingly more rational than expected. Maybe their clients are finally gaining some sense.

They bid their ado not long after, Foggy clapping and rubbing his hands together to prepare emotionally for the long drive back.

They stop by a diner on the way out of town, and, full of warm, home-style food, Matt starts to doze.

“Oh, my gosh!” Foggy says with a gasp, and Matt’s eyes snap open.

“What?” he asks, sitting up in his seat. “What’s wrong?”

How long was he asleep for? What has he missed? Is it—

“It’s nothing, Matt, jeez.” Foggy’s one hand breaks from the steering wheel to pat Matt’s thigh. “This is why—whatever, nevermind. Anyway. Apple-picking: you ever gone before?”

“Apple-picking? No, not that I can remember.”

Matt relaxes minutely back into his seat. Whatever Foggy’s sentence was going to be, Matt should probably be grateful he didn’t have to hear it.

“What?” Foggy asks, drawing out the ‘uh’ sound. “Not even as a kid?”

Matt shrugs. “Not to my memory.”

“This is an injustice,” Foggy says with the joke lawyer-voice he’s been using since law school. “We must rectify it at once. I just saw a sign for an orchard coming up. We’re totally going.”

Matt’s first instinct is to shut it down. He’s in an unfamiliar state and an unfamiliar situation. He wants to get back closer to home. He wants to hear the actual injustices so he can—well, stop them, or...or at least hear them.

The quiet away from the city is _ indescribable _...but it comes at a cost. Lack of knowledge doesn’t do away with the problem. It just obscures it.

So, Matt opens his mouth to tell Foggy no, not this time, but then he remembers bowling and Foggy’s laughter and Ms. Carla. And what comes out instead?

“Lead the way.”

Foggy laughs, and Matt knows he’s made the right choice.

“Yes! You will not be let down, dearest.”

“Let’s hope not, darling.”

They continue like this the rest of the way there, coming up with more and more elaborate terms of endearment as it goes on.

“It shall be splendid, my sweet, sensational an—oh, we’re here,” Foggy says, laughing the words from his mouth.

Matt closes his. Darn, he just came up with a good one.

But then he takes a deep breath in and literally everything else is forgotten.

It smells fucking amazing. Pardon his French.

“Oh, somebody likes it here,” Foggy teases, and Matt doesn’t even have the heart to fire anything back.

He noticed the slow increase of the smell as they got closer, but as they pull onto the gravel road of the orchard proper... It’s like his world is made of pure apples and honey and pumpkins. It’s wonderful.

Foggy puts the car in park then turns to look at him. “Are you gonna need a minute?” he asks in good humor. “Or should we get out now? I say give it a minute.”

Matt snorts a laugh. “I’m fine,” he says, unbuckling. Better than fine. “Let’s go.”

They head into the little orchard office and are greeted by the creaking bones of a kind older woman.

“Afternoon,” she greets in her cute little old lady voice. “How are you two handsome men today?”

Matt’s still reeling from the everything, so Foggy takes the wheel on this one. “We’re great,” he says. “Quiet day today?”

“You’re the first I’ve had,” she says then waves something in her hands. “Thought I would get some reading done.”

Ah. A book.

“Now, are you here for apples or pumpkins?”

“Apples, ma’am.”

“Wonderful. It’s a little late in the season, but they’re still delicious this time of year.” She rifles around her desk then passes something to Foggy. “Here’s a basket for you. Take as many as you can carry.”

They both call a thanks as they enter the field, Foggy with the basket on one arm and Matt hanging onto the other. 

Matt’s immediately led to a tree, beside which Foggy sets down the basket and plucks an apple.

“Here, take a bite,” Foggy says, holding it out.

“Are you sure this is allowed?” Matt asks, but he accepts the apple and smells it. Tart and sweet. Very tempting. 

“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” Foggy says, brushing him off with a wave of his hand. “People do it all the time. We gotta taste-test it, right?”

“If you say so.” Matt shrugs then takes a bite. “Okay, this is really good,” he says. “Get more of these.”

“Oh, just you wait, Matty-boy. It gets better.”

It does get better. Foggy guides him around rows of trees, helping to keep most of the fallen apples out of the way.

Matt pauses some minutes later, pulling Foggy to a stop.

“Oh, boy,” Foggy says as Matt detaches from his arm. But despite the wary tone, Matt can hear the laugh he’s holding back.

“Honey, hold my cane,” Matt says, passing it over and stepping up to a tree to his right.

“Oh, Christ,” Foggy blasphemes with a laugh. “You know, there are signs up saying not to climb the trees.”

“Didn’t see them,” Matt calls back with a wink. He does at least consider dropping it, but he swears he can smell the perfect apple somewhere up here, and, well. He’s already halfway up anyways. Might as well finish the job.

It takes a couple minutes—punctuated by Foggy’s near non-stop quips—but eventually Matt finds it, right near the top.

The orchard is still empty, so Matt just jumps back down to the ground. He adds a flip or two to show off, and Foggy calls him out with a snort. 

“I’ll phone the circus next time they’re in town.”

Matt rolls his eyes but smirks all the same. He holds out the apple and Foggy trades him his cane for it.

“What the hell?! This is really good.”

“And? What—you thought I did all that for a mediocre apple?”

“Well...kinda?”

Ridiculous. This is slander of Matt’s good name.

They eat that apple and a couple more. Like Foggy said, it definitely gets better.

It also gets worse.

After apple three, Matt has to start declining. It’s like his entire world is made of pure apples and honey and pumpkins. It’s organic. It’s fresh. It’s nauseating.

Foggy’s phone goes off about a half-hour after they enter the orchard, and Matt takes the basket from him with one hand. He then juggles the apple Foggy pushes into his cane-hand.

“Who is it?” he asks, pretending to take a bite of the Golden “Delicious”.

“Karen,” Foggy says to him. Then, into the phone, he greets, “Hey!”

“Ask her why she called you and not me,” Matt jokes. He tosses the apple remains off to the side and picks a couple more off the tree, adding them to their basket since Foggy seemed to like it. 

Foggy snorts and relays the question, and Matt hears Karen laugh over the line before he tunes out the conversation.

He tilts his head in the direction he’s going and hears Foggy stroll along not far behind him. The cane is especially helpful now, and Matt keeps it connected to the ground to better sweep away apples. He tries not to feel too humiliated when he ends up tripping over one anyway.

“No shit,” Foggy says into the phone, excited in tone. But then he pauses and his following “Oh?” is low and questioning. Not such good news, then?

Matt starts leading them back towards the orchard office as Foggy closes off the conversation.

Casually, Matt asks, “What’s up?”

“Apparently Mr. Flake finally showed up.”

Matt hums. Honestly, he’s not sure if he even wants to meet with him at this point. With a nickname like that…

Foggy continues, “Karen didn’t say much, but she said we should hear him out. Then she laughed.”

“Uh-oh.”

“I know, right?” Foggy pulls the basket back out of Matt’s hands as he says, “Anyway, I told her I’d text her as we get closer to the city so we can all meet up.”

“Sounds good.”

It sounds like they’re closing up this little excursion. As they approach the orchard office once more, Matt really thinks he’s made it out. Then suddenly Foggy says, “Oh, pumpkins!” and Matt’s forced to swear internally. “Should we get a couple?”

“That sounds like fun,” Matt says, even as his head throbs. “I haven’t carved a pumpkin since I was a kid.” 

“Same.”  
“False. Law school, year one,” Matt reminds him. “I smelled it well into December.”

“Oh, right,” Foggy says. He pauses then nudges Matt’s shoulder. “Hey, will the smell bother you? We can pass this year.”

Matt wants to get the hell out of dodge. So it’s a tempting offer. But—

“No, I’ll be okay as long as we keep them outside,” he says.

“Deal.”

He manages to fake his way through pretty successfully. They settle the pumpkins and apples in the trunk—thank God—perhaps fifteen-minutes later, and Foggy whistles a show-tune as they slide into the car. 

Matt’s pleased with himself for that.

Mostly, he’s just excited to go home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woof, posting this one a couple days late. I'm thinking updates will likely be a bit sporadic from here on, but you never know. As is, I'm so relieved to finally get this one out. Not so sure about Nurse Joyce's role--I'm tempted to make her more wacky and annoying, but I'll save that for the final edit-through. For now, I'm okay with this one. Hope you all enjoy :)


	6. Dinner at Karen's House

By the time they get back into the city, it's already passing two, and between returning the rental car and freshening up, the three of them unanimously decide they might as well just take the rest of the day. They agree to meet at Karen's in a couple hours to discuss the Drake case over dinner, and Matt spends the time in-between taking a quiet moment to himself.

He has a cup of coffee (who says it's just a morning drink?) and a shower (not at the same time, of course) then tucks himself onto the couch with an audiobook set up on his phone.

Karen's place is a little out of the way for Matt and Foggy both, so they agree to just meet there around six. Nobody mentioned it, but there's an implied competition to see who can be the most prompt. Matt's determined for it to be him.

He curses internally when he picks out Foggy walking from a couple blocks away and speeds up—at least, as much as one can without crossing the line into ‘dumbass’, speed-walking with a bag of two pumpkins.

He blows right past a storefront that smells suspiciously like eggs (ugh, teenagers. That’s rough) and skips to the side to avoid some alley trash spilling over onto the sidewalk.

When he approaches Foggy at Karen’s door, Matt feels his watch for the time, finding it just a minute before five.

“Evening, Mr. Nelson,” Matt says, inclining his head and holding out a hand. He’s breathing shallowly, pretending not to have lost his breath.

“Mr. Murdock,” Foggy replies, meeting Matt’s hand for a shake and none the wiser.

“You’re here early,” Matt says with a shark’s smile. “How...assuming.”

“Ah, and I notice you’ve arrived right on the dot. Very prompt of you. You weren’t giving them a minute more, hm?” Foggy laughs as though the passive-aggressive remark was a joke, and Matt laughs the same stuttering laugh with him.

They let the joke descend into an ‘awkward’ silence, but they drop it as Karen opens the door.

“Hey, guys!” she says. But then she pauses, and silence takes over. With a laugh, she finally says, “You guys were just doing the thing again, weren’t you.”

Ah, she must’ve seen something on their faces.

“Not sure what you mean,” Matt says as Foggy says, “What thing?”

She snorts a laugh. “Sure, alright. Here, come in! Let me take your coats. Shoes off or on—I don’t care.”

Matt sets the pumpkin-bag aside to take his own off anyway, and he hears Foggy do the same.

De-shoe’d, they make their way through the short hallway to the kitchen where Karen tells Matt she’s set up a table and chairs.

“Thank God for IKEA.”

“Right?” Foggy says. “IKEA furnished our law school years.

Matt snorts, letting Karen take the pumpkin bag from him. “As if our office isn’t an IKEA showroom in its own right.”

“Okay, true.”

Karen laughs and sets the bag down by the trash.

“Foggy, let me get that for you,” she says, and Foggy passes his over.

“Thanks,” he says. “Matt’s the genius for using a bag. Here I am, walking around the city with a pumpkin, like a jackass.”

“I’m sure nobody cares,” Karen says as Matt says, “Yeah, fool move.”

“Hey!”

Matt laughs, hoping Foggy’s smiling and not taking it to heart. Just in case, he adds, “Just kidding, boo boo.”

“Yeah... Boo Boo the Fool.”

Karen pipes up then, saying, “Foggy, I didn’t know you knew about memes.”

“Excuse me? What, because I’m a big-shot New York lawyer I’ve suddenly lost touch with my people? Please, Karen.”

Matt huffs a laugh, twisting his cane around in his hands.

Karen’s house is nice. She clearly aired the place out and lit a pine-candle a few hours ago, and more than anything, it just smells like her. Familiar. Family. Matt smiles.

It also smells like something very delicious.

“Did you cook?” Matt asks once her and Foggy’s conversation dies down and stepping closer to the oven. “It smells great.”

“Nope!” she says, excited. “Mrs. Kaminski did!”

“Oh, no way!” Foggy says, and Matt laughs.

Should’ve known she’d follow through on her promise.

They sit down to eat the soup Mrs. Kaminski made, settling in with a nice white wine Karen pops open.

“So,” Karen says, swallowing the word with a sip of wine. “How was the trip? And where are my Skittles?” The last part is said with a laugh, and it makes Foggy and Matt laugh, too.

“Ooh, I forgot it at home,” Foggy says, “but I’ll bring it in to the office tomorrow.”

“Yeah, you better,” Karen says.

“Is that any way to speak to your boss?”

“Excuse me, but co-boss,” Matt interrupts, and Foggy says:

“Yes, excuse you. I was talking here.”

“At least I didn’t forget Karen’s Skittles,” Matt says, holding his wine in one hand with sass. “Or her preferred candy, for that matter.” Then he sips the wine, feeling like he’s a high-end woman out for brunch with her girlfriends.

It’s a very specific feeling.

“Really?” Foggy says. “You’re gonna hold your superpowers against me? Even—“

“Guys, guys,” Karen interrupts, laughter falling past her lips. “Enough with the fighting! Can’t we just have dinner like a normal family?” she asks, pitching her voice like a teenager on a sitcom.

Matt hears Foggy rustle around and focuses, but thankfully Foggy narrates:

“I am straightening out my napkin with class and grace. Yes, sweet Karen, your father and I can get along for one meal. Right, Matthew?”

“Sounds swell, Franklin.”

There’s a pause. Then Foggy sighs. “Not even as a joke, Matt. God.”

Matt raises his hands in innocence. “You’ll have to take that up with your mother,” he says then picks up his spoon for another bite of soup.

They all settle back down and Karen’s the one who gets them back to business.

“So I’m studying for my exam—I mean hard at work,” Karen begins. Neither Matt nor Foggy minds if Karen studies during down-time of business hours. The joke is still funny, though. She continues, “when suddenly I hear a knock at the door. I start giving the whole spiel, but guess who it is? Mr. Flake himself.”

The fact that the nickname stuck really says something. Foggy says for him:

“I’m assuming you sent him away from our fine establishment.”

“Now, I was going to,” Karen starts, and Foggy groans, even though he and Matt both knew she met with him after all. Karen giggles and says, “But hear me out.”

“Now,” Matt begins, “What could Mr. Drake possibly offer that’s enough to sway dear Karen?”

“Money,” Karen says. “Lots and lots of money.”

“Shove-in,” Matt jokes under his breath, and Karen shakes her head.

“If this number was wrong then I don’t wanna be right.”

After she shares the amount Foggy seems to agree. And Matt—well, he just doesn’t care.

“But wait,” Karen said, a laugh on her lips. “Somehow, it gets better.”

As it turns out, Mr. Drake has dumbass-levels to rival Matt’s.

“What do you mean he egged a gang member’s house?” Matt asks, dropping his spoon into the bowl and leaning forward.

“I know, right! Aaagh, I thought I misheard him for a second.”

“Well... Did he get caught?” Foggy asks, and Karen shifts around, hair brushing her shirt.

“I’m shaking my head,” she narrates, and Matt smiles at the effort she’s making. “Not by the police, but he says the gang-members know he did it.”

“Okay, so what‘s he want us for?” Foggy asks.

“What do you think?” Karen asks. “Guy immediately started asking for Daredevil.”

Because of course. How many times have they had to explain that there’s no actual connection between the firm and Daredevil? Not publicly, anyways.

“Now, I know you sent him away after that,” Matt says, and Karen sighs.

“You already know what I told him.” She puts on her professional, customer service voice as she continues, “‘We would be happy to offer pre-legal advice,’ yadda, yadda. Then I told him how he can actually get in contact with Daredevil.”

Matt almost facepalms. “Which would be...”

“Oh, you’ll see,” Karen says, a smirk pulling on the words.

Matt huffs a laugh, ignoring the tenseness in his shoulders.

“But wait,” Karen says, and Matt has to hold in a groan. “I haven’t even told you guys the best part: you know the guy that’s been pulling the emergency brake on subways? It’s Drake!”

Matt’s mouth drops.

“Ha! I knew it!” Foggy declares, and well, he did call it, didn’t he?

"Drake's the serial brake-puller," Matt repeats with a disbelieving laugh. 

Karen says, still jovial, "Crazy, right? I couldn't believe it."

Matt shakes his head, still processing the situation.

“You guys about done?” Foggy asks, flipping the topic. “Because I’ve been thinking about those pumpkins all day. This is going to be amazing.”

Pushing his bowl in front of him, Matt says, “Yeah, I’m good,” and Karen says something similar.

After rejecting Foggy’s and Matt’s repeated demands to wash the dishes (Matt even jokingly calls ableism in a strong yet refuted effort), Karen grabs some silverware to carve and newspapers to lay out.

They give Karen the honors of first pick, since she was the one who offered to host, and Matt lets Foggy pick next.

As they set in on carving, Matt tries to clear his mind. He fails. All he can think about is his upcoming meeting with Mr. Drake and what it might entail.

He stabs into the pumpkin, slowly slicing a circle around the stem.

Karen said he egged the house of a gang member? Matt’s done a pretty good job of clearing the more major players out of the Kitchen. Really, the only ones left are...but it couldn’t be...

Pay attention, he scolds himself, when he hears Drake’s name.

“Does he actually want legal advice?” Foggy’s asking. “Or is he just planning on bugging us further about you-know-who?”

And that’s another worry. If Daredevil meets with Drake now, will Drake assume it was Nelson and Murdock’s doing? He’ll have to play it especially cool to keep Drake’s mind away from it.

“Ew, it feels so gross,” Karen says, referencing the pumpkin guts she plops onto the newspaper. She continues, “No, he actually did sound like he really wanted us to build a case for him, just in case he gets caught.”

And that’s what pre-legal’s for. Maybe the guy does have some sense. Although, that might be a stretch.

“Okay, I’ll buy it,” Foggy says. Then, in a more ominous tone, he adds, “For now.”

Matt snorts a laugh, despite not really feeling it. He pulls the stem off the pumpkin, setting it to the side, and picks up the spoon Karen gave him to scrape away the insides. Pumpkin in his lap, he sets to it, doing his best to stay focused on the conversation.

He is having fun, damn it.

He reaches into the pumpkin and—

“Nooooo!” he moans, pulling his hand back out. “Oh, dear God.”

Foggy, of course, immediately bursts into laughter, loud and riotous.

“Matt, your face,” Foggy manages to get out, and Matt jokingly intensifies his disgust face before wiping it away.

He pushes his pumpkin away, saying, “Foggy, I love you, but I am not touching that.”

Still chucking, Foggy reaches over to pat Matt’s head, saying, “Don’t worry, I’ll take the goop out for you, hon.”

“Thank you, sweetie,” Matt says ironically, still swallowing his goop-induced gag.

Karen fakes her own gag, which really doesn’t help Matt’s state, but it’s still funny.

“No PDA in my kitchen,” she says, and Foggy argues back:

“Pet-names are not PDA. Also, this is not a public venue.”

“Well, no DA in my kitchen.”

“Seriously, that guy sucks.”

The conversation dissolves, as it often does, becoming ironically petty but mostly just silly.

For all that Matt hates the leftover goop-feel on his hands, it’s a good distraction from his mind. Of course, right as Matt thinks this, he’s reminded of a million thoughts he’d rather not be having.

It’s gonna be a long night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am I happy with this chapter? No. Does it exist? Hell yeah! I have the rest of the story plotted out...it's just about writing it from here. I believe in myself. If anybody's reading this, a little encouragement would be nice, I won't lie. Either way, thanks so much for reading this far, guys! I appreciate so much :')


	7. Mr. Drake

A long night, it truly would be. After finishing off their pumpkins—

“Feel,” Foggy said, and Matt traced the pumpkin, feeling out the lines of what was undoubtedly:

“Devil horns,” Matt deadpanned, much to the laughing joy of Karen and Foggy both.

“It’s Pump-devil!” Foggy exclaimed, far too proud of his art piece.

In spite of it all, Matt had to laugh. Foggy.

—but after the pumpkins, Matt jogs back home, taking the opportunity to warm up for his Daredevil activities as it’s presented.

He gets home, suits up, stretches it out, then bounces through the roof escape, a little tired but ready to take on the night.

He stops a mugging, maybe two, but doesn’t bother with the small-time drug-deal. He does, however, stop the drug-deal gone awry, leaping across a freshly-tagged alleyway to disarm the man’s knife before it can do any damage.

Then for a hot minute, it gets quiet. The kind of quiet that would normally make him consider turning in early but tonight just makes him wary.

The kind of quiet that doesn’t last for long.

“Oh, please save me, Daredevil!”

“What the fuck are you doing?”

The man hangs from the edge of the roof by his hands. Matt might buy it, except the acting skills on this guy are atrocious.

“Falling to my death! Oh, help!”

But in spite of the melodrama, the man smells like sour sweat. So there is at least some salvageable sense in this idiot. Some.

Matt stands for a moment, pretending to be staring down at the man, before he finally bends down, yanking Dumbass by the bicep of one arm up and over the lip of the rooftop.

(“In my defense,” Karen would later say, hiding a laugh behind a hand, “I did  _ not  _ tell him to do that.”)

“Thank you,” Dumbass pants out.

Matt doesn’t respond, only turning away and making like he’s about to leave.

“Wait!” Dumbass shouts, and Matt pauses, tilting his head.

“Look,” Dumbass says, though he falters when Matt turns his head towards him. “Uh… Thanks for saving me, um, actually, I need your help.”

“Planning on falling off other roofs?” Matt replies, and Dumbass is quiet for a second before he starts to laugh nervously.

“Actually, ha, uh...” Dumbass shuffles his feet on the ground before straightening up to say, “Did you get my message from Nelson and Murdock?”

Ah, how to play this...

Matt stays quiet.

“...Yes?” Dumbass asks.

“No.”

“Oh. Okay. Um. So I need help. My name’s Nathan Drake. No idea why, but a local gang is after me.”

“You have no clue why.”

“No idea.”

“Alright. What gang are we talking about? There’s not many left around here,” Matt says, even though he already has an idea, based on the tomfoolery Drake gets up to.

“Uhh, it’s the one with that graffiti tag you see all over the place. The Dullses.”

“...The Dulce’s?”

“Yeah, them. They’re awful, they spray-painted my window then got mad when I confronted them about it.”

“So you confronted them,” Matt repeats, and Dumbass Drake’s heart-rate speeds up.

“Well, er, what else was I supposed to do, just let them deface my home?”

“What did you do?” Matt asks, though he voices it more as a command.

“Nothing, man! I just told ‘em off. Honest!”

Even if Matt didn’t have insider knowledge, he’d still know that it’s a bullshit lie. He lets it go, quiet for a moment before saying:

“So what makes you think they’re out for you now?”

“I came home the other day to bricks thrown through my window. There was glass everywhere. I gotta stay with my parents now.”

Matt nods shortly. “Stay with your parents,” he says, “and don’t tell anyone where you are. I’ll talk to them.” Then, in reference to the brake-pulling: “Stay out of trouble.”

Drake heaves a sigh of relief, saying, “Thanks so much, man, uh—“

“You’re welcome,” Matt interrupts, slightly put-off by somebody calling him “man” in mask and entirely not wanting to waste his night listening to Drake ramble.

He turns around and starts to walk away when Drake calls:

“Wait! Do you want my number or something?”

Matt half-snorts at the way that could be taken but only says, “I’ll find you.” Then he jumps from the rooftop.

“Holy shit,” Drake says from above him, and this time Matt actually does snort at it.

Then he sighs when he remembers his mission. Right.

So, the Dulce’s. Honestly, if their name wasn’t shoved in his face, Matt would’ve just continued to let them be.

The teenagers Drake is scared of can hardly be considered a “gang”; they’re more like a group of friends who’s main m-o is to vandalize buildings, usually just with spray-paint.

Matt doesn’t give a shit about them. The way he sees it, they’re hardly hurting anybody by tagging a building every now and then.

But with Drake having escalated something with them, he supposes it wouldn’t hurt to drop by and scare them off. Or at least away from Drake.

The first order of business is finding them, though.

He heads east, towards the hang-out of one of his longest-running and most trustworthy connections. 

Phil is an older man who has been homeless for over fifteen years. Matt’s come across him since he was a teen; halfway through his stay at the orphanage, Phil started to attend St. Agnes Church, and though they never spoke, Matt still heard about him and his story, used by the nuns simultaneously as a story of caution and a story of faith. 

The first time that Matt spoke with Phil, it was about a year into his run as Daredevil. After losing track of a pair of thieves, Phil was nearby and offered his two-cents of where he was sure the thieves would strike next. Normally, Matt would take a civilian’s ideas (other than his own friends, of course) as something to consider but ultimately ignore, but after hearing about how the homeless in the area were harassed by the thieves often, the two ended up working together to bring the thieves to justice.

Turns out, living on the street tends to grant access to some of its secrets.

Since, Matt’s turned to Phil a few times. Sometimes his leads dead-end, but Matt finds that they usually are useful for something. 

It’ll be good to check in on the guy anyway.

When he reaches Phil’s corner, Matt equally slows and harshens his steps, trying to make enough noise to give Phil some heads-up, but not enough to draw unnecessary eyes.

Phil sits up against the business doorway he typically calls home, shifting and eventually spotting Matt heading towards him. He grunts. 

“Evening, Phil,” Matt says as he approaches. “How’s your night going?”

“Was going just fine,” Phil grumps. “What do you want, devil?”

“Happy to see you, too,” Matt replies, though he leaves the sarcasm out of his voice. He is interrupting the man’s sleep, after all. Leaning against the wall of the building and facing in, Matt says, “I’m looking for some information on some neighborhood kids. Does the ‘Dulce’s’ ring any bells for you?”

Phil groans as he adjusts then says, “Hmm, maybe.”

Matt chuckles, reaching into the compartment in his boot for the twenty he keeps folded in there. He holds it out to Phil, who accepts it then says:

“The ‘Dulce’s’, huh? That’s those graffiti kids. Yeah, they like to mock us street-folk, but they never really do any harm.”

“Do you know who any of them are? Where they meet, or where they get their paint from?”

“Slow down, slow down,” Phil says, waving a hand around. He rubs his face then says, “Right, so, no, no clue who they are, and as far as I know they don’t have a typical hang-out. No clue about the paint either. I might know where you can find them, though. Will’s, you heard of the place?”

Matt considers. “Will’s Deli?” he asks.

“Ding, ding!” Phil chimes. He chuckles to himself then says, “Yeah, those trouble-makers like to grab a bite from there a couple times a week. I see ‘em when I’m stopping in for a late-night coffee.”

“Do you have a time for me?”

Phil hums to himself, rubbing at the scruff on his cheek, then says, “Yeah, I don’t know, try twelve to one. Somewhere around then.”

Matt straightens. “Twelve to one, that works. You take care of yourself, Phil.”

“Hey, hold up a sec,” Phil says as Matt’s starting to turn around. “Those kids… You go easy on ‘em. They ain’t so bad.”

Matt nods, but before he can say anything, Phil snorts and says:

“’The fuck outta here, devil.”

Matt chuckles to himself then takes his leave. By this point, it’s probably nearing two, and Matt considers heading home early for the night.

Then he hears a cry from up North. 

Right.

The job’s not over until the Kitchen says it’s over.

————————

It takes multiple nights of staking out the deli to get anything. It gets to the point that he actually considers whether his time would be better spent waiting it out until he gets a whiff of fresh paint.

Thankfully, right between twelve and one, like Phil said, a couple of teenage boys, one with a backpack full of jingling paint cans, step into the deli. 

Matt waits for them to come back out, sandwiches in tow, then silently tracks them back to their meet-up. 

Thankful that this adventure only ended up taking a few days of his time, and excited to get this one off his radar, he waits until they’ve just started popping the caps off the paint cans to drop in.

Literally.

The rest of the group, five other boys, are busy staring at a wall, so it’s just the one left who spots Matt as he lands behind them.

“Holy fuck!” the boy exclaims, staggering back a few steps. 

The rest of the teens turn around at that, each letting out their own expletives.

Matt starts to speak, saying with presence, “I’m here to talk about Nathan Dra—"

But before he can get much further, pandemonium breaks out, most of the teens scattering. Matt reaches for the one running by him, the one with the paint can, and, really, he should see it coming.

Right as he registers what’s about to happen, the most he can do is start to turn his head downwards before the kid is spraying paint directly into Matt’s face.

“Shit,” he curses lowly, and he keeps his mouth open to stop from spreading the taste, breathing shallowly through it in an attempt to keep it from overwhelming him. But, well, fail, he still starts gagging immediately, and by the time he regains his bearings, the kids are all multiple blocks away, running towards opposite sides of the Kitchen.

“Shit,” he curses, this time a bit more loudly, since there’s nobody there to hear it but himself. “Shit!”

He spits a couple of times, gags a little bit more, then starts making his way home. Paint is hardly the worst thing to happen to him on patrol, but honestly? He’s done. At least for the night. 

Distracted by the paint taste, he manages to forget entirely about one unfortunate factor in this whole thing: Foggy spent the night.

When Matt reaches his rooftop door and remembers this cruel fact, he groans. He can hear Foggy just inside on the couch, but he could be dozing. Maybe Matt can get away with this one.

No such luck.

The moment Matt closes the door behind him, Foggy sits up, turning towards him and setting something to the side, saying, “Oh, Matt, welcome—oh my god?!”

He jumps up, heart suddenly racing, and Matt waves a hand, saying, “I’m fine, I’m fine. My only pain is in my ego.” 

Regardless, Foggy meets him at the bottom of the stairs, flicking the light switch just to the side of it, then doubling over, hands on his knees.

“Ohhh, thank god,” he says with a loud sigh.

Matt tilts his head, confused, until Foggy straightens up, saying:

“Matt, what the fuck? I thought that was blood! Why do you have red paint all over your face?”

Wincing as he realizes where Foggy’s mind went, Matt says, “Oh, so it’s red.” He rubs a hand over Foggy’s shoulder and continues, “Sorry, Fogs. It’s been a rough night.”

“Well, yeah, obviously,” Foggy says with a shaky laugh. “Here, get that mask off. Jesus, Matt. That must taste terrible.”

“It’s not great,” Matt admits. Now that he’s just started to block it out, the reminder of it coating his mouth is not so welcome.

He passes Foggy his mask when he gestures for it then says, “I’ll be right back,” heading towards the bathroom.

“Are you gonna throw up?” Foggy asks behind him.

Casually, Matt replies, “Yeah. Probably.”

Once his mouth tastes like mouthwash and equal parts paint and vomit, Matt considers the job as well done as it’s gonna get and stalks back into the other room. He finds Foggy in the kitchen…spraying non-stick cooking spray onto his mask.

“You realize I don’t like the smell of vegetable oil much more than paint, right?” he asks Foggy with a smirk.

Foggy snorts, saying, “Shut up, this is what Google told me to do to get the paint out.”

“My mask is red, isn’t it?”

“Believe me, I’m doing you a favor,” Foggy says, setting down the spray and rubbing the mask with a paper towel. “You would not believe how much the paint stands out.”

Walking up next to him, Matt wraps an arm around him, saying, “Thanks, Fogs. You don’t have to do that.”

Foggy huffs a small laugh. “Hey, that’s what I’m here for.”

“Specifically to clean paint off my mask?”

“Among other things. But especially to get paint stains out. Now go shower; you smell like sweat.”

That’s fair. He listens to Foggy as he cleans himself up, slightly guilty for interrupting his night with this, but also relieved to have him here, both because he loves him and because it’s a great distraction from the looming knowledge that this task just got exponentially harder.

————————

At work, a few new cases start to roll in—normally a great thing, but now at a slightly inconvenient time. Between casework by day and Daredevil work by night, Matt finds his schedule packed.

But that’s alright.

He’ll catch up on sleep, and God doesn’t mind if he skips prayer once or twice. It’s okay.

Matt won’t tear himself up over that.

The issue is finding time for Foggy in there. Because every night that slips like sand between his fingers feels like the beginning of the end. He needs to show he cares.

He takes Foggy to a movie after work, something he’s seemed interested in for weeks. But even though Matt calls ahead, the audio description device is out of batteries when he shows up.

“Everything working right?” Foggy whispers.

Matt pats his knee. “Works great,” he lies.

Foggy enjoys the movie, Matt’s certain of it, and that’s worth the frustrating confusion of listening to a move without description.

When they get ice cream afterwards, Matt feels like he’ll shake apart. He blames it on the cold, and it works.

This is a nice restaurant. Matt swallows and pushes a smile onto his face.

“No, go on,” he urges, leaning forward in his seat. He picks up his wine glass to swirl it, and the hollow glass whirl sounds nice. It pairs well with the soft piano chiming in the corner.

He doesn’t hear the man having a very terrible time in the bathroom.

“If you say so,” Foggy says then jumps back into his story.

Foggy’s a great storyteller. Matt’s captivated.

He doesn’t know that the lady a few tables down is a prostitute. And possible not one by choice, based on...well.

He pushes it from his mind, scooching in his chair.

He’s fine. He’s fine.

There’s a lady outside. She’s being berated by her partner. Now he’s yelling. And she’s crying.

And Matt sips on his wine.

“I love it here,” Foggy says, and Matt nods in agreement.

The pianist plays on.

He comes into work late for the third time this week. He’ll probably do it tomorrow, too.

The coffee tastes burnt. He takes it black.

“Matt,” Foggy says, coming into his office later that day. Karen’s left to pick up lunch—Matt claimed to have eaten just before he left for work. “I... How’s Daredevil going?”

Matt forces a small smile onto his face. He doesn’t care if it looks a little like a grimace; it sort of is one. “You saw what happened the other night.”

“No, that was kind of hilarious,” Foggy says with a small and forced-sounding laugh. “I just mean, I don’t know. In general. How are things?”

“Things are okay,” Matt says, swallowing. “I’m getting a handle on it.”

Foggy pauses. His heartbeat does something, but Matt doesn’t know what it means.

“Okay,” Foggy says finally. He shifts where he stands, leaning against the doorframe. “Good. That’s good. I just... You’ve been coming in late a lot these days. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’ll try harder to be in on time.”

Foggy waves a hand, saying, “Nobody cares if you’re late sometimes,” he says. “I just want to know that you’re good.”

“I’m good.”

“...Right. Just. Hmm. Just let me know if I can do anything. Play housemaid. Cook dinner. Whatever.”

Matt smiles, guilty yet heart-warmed. “Thank you, Foggy. I’m okay.”

He’s okay. 

————————

It’s by complete luck that he finds Drake that night.

He drops down behind him just as the dumbass reaches into his egg carton.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Drake jumps, and the egg in his hand splatters on the ground.

“I told you to say out of trouble,” Matt says, unable to keep the anger out of his tone. “I’m handling it.”

Heart racing, Drake says, “I’m—I—I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I just—”

“Go the fuck home. And stay there,” Matt demands, and Drake runs off, ditching the eggs in an alley dumpster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise, readers! I bet you thought you'd seen the last of me. I certainly started to think you'd seen the last of me. But nope, here I am, and guess what? I went ahead and finished this story. All I have to do is some minor editing on the final chapters and boom! Story complete! So excited to finally share the conclusion with you guys. So thanks so much for reading this far!! And I hope you enjoy the rest!


	8. Hit the Brakes

With the Kaminski case’s next court date quickly approaching, the pressure to make sure everything’s in order starts to grow. Mrs. Kaminski comes down with the flu at a very inopportune time, though thankfully she swears she’ll be well enough to attend court.

Still, rather than make the poor woman make the trek to their office in the brisk fall morning, Foggy decides Matt should be the one to visit her at home to give her some final prep and tips for making her statements when the day comes.

Matt’s fairly certain Foggy only insists Matt do it to let him sleep in before the meeting, but he won’t argue, and he definitely won’t complain. He makes the stroll to her house around ten in the morning, bundled in a scarf and jacket to keep the cool breeze at bay.

“Matthew,” she greets when she opens her apartment door. “Come in, come in! Good morning, are you well? Been eating?”

Matt smiles, and even in spite of the stress of the week, he feels himself relax, at least somewhat.

“I’m just fine, Mrs. Kaminski,” he says as she leads him inside.

She pulls him around a coffee table to a squishy and aged, yet quite comfortable, couch in the middle of the living area.

“Happy to hear it,” she says, and she leaves him on the couch to enter the attached kitchen. “Coffee? Tea?”

“Oh, I’m alright,” Matt says, even though he forwent his morning coffee to eek out an extra couple minutes of sleep.

“Please,” Mrs. Kaminski says, in a tone of voice that says she will not take “no” for an answer. “You want me to be the only one having coffee? Do you want cream and sugar?”

Matt laughs. “Just black would be great,” he says. “Thank you.”

Mrs. Kaminski hums a response, and Matt settles back against the couch as she finishes pouring their cups. She must have brewed extra knowing she would convince him.

She reenters the living area moments later, settling Matt’s cup on the table and keeping her own in hand as she situates herself on a chair across from him.

It’s just an instant after she sits down that she says, “Shit, are you hungry? Oh, please mind my French.”

“You’re fine,” Matt says, smiling. “And thank you, I ate before I came.” That part’s a lie, but she doesn’t have to know that.

Mrs. Kaminski hums in what sounds like suspicion, so Matt urges her towards the conversation at hand.

Thankfully, Mrs. Kaminski seems like she’s become pretty well-prepared. She actually listened to their advice in previous meetings; something that’s fairly uncommon in their firm, unfortunately. From the sound of things, her case should be a snap so long as she doesn’t forget her practice while on the stand.

Of course, it’s halfway through their discussion that Mrs. Kaminski takes it upon herself to prepare lunch.

“Really, you don’t have to worry yourself,” Matt says, though he knows it’s a lost cause.

“Please,” she says, “the dish, it demands to be shared.”

Luckily for Matt (besides the inherent luck of a client making him such delicious-smelling soup), Mrs. Kaminski is a great-multitasker and might actually learn better with her hands busy. They get through with their rehearsal with time to spare for lunch.

Serving up the tomato soup into two bowls, Mrs. Kaminski slides one in front of Matt on the kitchen table and sits with the other in front of herself.

“This smells delicious,” Matt compliments.

“It tastes even better,” Mrs. Kaminski says, blowing on a spoonful then taking a bite. Through it, she says, “This recipe, it is from my husband’s grandmother. Family secret.”

“What’s the secret?” Matt tries, because after a bite, he discovers that the soup is in fact better than it smells.

“Ahaha, nice try there,” Mrs. Kaminski says in good humor. “It wouldn’t be a secret then, would it?”

Matt accepts that with a nod. “What’s your husband like?” he asks, to make conversation and because he wasn’t aware she had a husband.

“Late husband,” Mrs. Kaminski says, sobered. “He died two years ago.”

Matt sets down his spoon. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

She finishes her bite then waves him off with her spoon hand. “It’s life. We had great times, enough to last a lifetime.”

“That’s the best we can hope for,” Matt says. He’s wondering if his experiences with Foggy will be enough, in the end.

It’s not that Matt’s planning on kicking the bucket early, or any time soon, for that matter. But he’s no fool. He won’t pretend that his work doesn’t have risks; even after the fiasco that was Fisk, he’s still had a number of close calls. It only takes one lucky shot, after all, for a d-rate mugger to be his end.

“It is,” Mrs. Kaminski says, sipping her long-cold coffee. Then, a bit brighter: “Do you have somebody special in your life, Matthew?”

Matt smiles. “I do,” he says, keeping it vague just in case. Not that he thinks Mrs. Kaminski is bigoted, and it’s no secret, but it’s not necessarily professional to imagine your attorneys as more than business partners.

“Do you have great experiences with her?” she asks. 

Matt pauses as he considers. “I try to,” he says finally, and he attempts to add some pep into it even though just the thought of it has grown exhausting.

Not Foggy. Foggy’s not exhausting. It’s...himself. It’s himself. He knows this.

“You work too much, don’t you?” Mrs. Kaminski asks knowingly.

Matt laughs. “I’m told that often,” he says. “It makes me think they must be right.”

“Probably,” she says with humor. “Work isn’t everything, you must know. You want advice from an old lady?”

“You’re hardly old,” Matt interjects.

She laughs. “I’m nearly seventy-years old,” she says. “But on the inside I’m still young. Now, listen up. Work, it’s good. It pays for your home and your toys. Maybe some kids. And if you enjoy it, then it’s good memories. But the stuff outside, that’s what you’ll look back on. The weekends and morning breakfast. Birthdays. Vacation.”

“My work is important,” Matt points out. “Sometimes I feel like I can’t get away. Like it’s wrong to.”

She waves him off, literally. “Important, yes, it is. But you find a way.”

Matt laughs. “That’s harder than you make it out to be.”

“You find a way,” Mrs. Kaminski repeats.

“I’ll try.”

————————

The Drake case is going…not so well.

The day case, now that’s going fine. They’ve come up with multiple angles they could attack it from, and they’re fairly certain they could keep the guy away from most of the heat, should he ever get caught.

The night case… Now that’s a different story. 

The Dulce’s are avoiding Will’s, it seems, because they haven’t been back since, and Matt’s been staking it out just about every night. He keeps a nose out for fresh paint, but it seems every time he catches onto something, he gets there just a couple minutes too late. 

He goes so far as attempting to radar the entirety of Hell’s Kitchen, listening for groups of four or more, but between parties and bars, the task is impossible and only leaves him with a migraine that keeps him up all night. 

His nights are spent focusing harder than ever, and even though he’s up for only half of the night these days, he still manages to show up to work late more often than not.

————————

After work one day, Matt starts to head home but finds himself being pulled to his church. He goes with it, nervous to show his face after skipping out on the past few services yet almost relieved to speak with Father Lantom again.

“Father,” Matt greets gently, sitting down in Father’s pew, leaving a couple feet of space between them.

“Matthew,” Father returns, sounding equal parts surprised and not to see him there. “It’s been a couple of weeks. I was starting to worry for you.”

“I’ve been a bit busy,” Matt says honestly. “I was hoping I could speak with you. If you aren’t too busy, that is.”

Father draws in a breath then lets it out slowly. “I’m never too busy for a friend,” he says finally.

Matt settles into the familiar chair in Father’s office as the espresso brews. He doesn’t say anything when Father adds his typical sugar to the cappuccino, accepting the drink the way he prepares it.

When Father settles into his own seat, he sets his cup and saucer down onto the desk, saying, “Now, what are we talking about today?”

Certainly, he thinks the topic is going to be heavier than it is.

“It’s not about my night job,” Matt starts. “For once. It’s more of a…personal matter.”

“This is surprising,” Father says teasingly, picking up his cappuccino. Before he sips it, he says, “Go on.”

“I—it’s about Foggy.”

Father sits up. “You’re still seeing each other?” he asks, to confirm.

Matt nods. “Yes, we’re still together.”

Speaking with Father was a priority before Matt decided to make things official with Foggy, so this is old news.

“But,” Father prompts.

“But,” Matt repeats, “I’m…worried, I suppose. I worry that I’m not good enough for him.”

“Ah. This again.”

Matt ignores the quip, continuing, “I fear that he’s too kind to leave me, even though he deserves better.”

“Right, right,” Father says, setting his cup back down with a dink. “Last time we discussed this, we agreed that Foggy is not the type to accept a situation he doesn’t feel comfortable with.”

“But what if he’s too comfortable? What if he doesn’t see that he could have more?”

“Well, now that sure is stripping away his agency, don’t you think?”

Matt lets that sink in. He nods after a moment.

“Right,” Father says. “As for not being good enough for him, you are trying, are you not?”

“Every day,” Matt says, rubbing the pad of his thumb. “I keep trying to be good enough for him.”

“You should talk with him,” Father says, one-toned since he already knows that Matt will say:

“Maybe.”

Father lets out a breath then says, “In that case, I think what you’re doing is fine. Just keep being yourself. One day you’ll find that you are enough.”

————————

The talk with Father Lantom helps. Father said to be himself; perhaps that could be taken to mean he should continue down the path he’s on.

He spontaneously decides on the Met. It’s perfect. He’ll take Foggy to see the new art exhibit he’s been talking about. It’ll be great.

That’s how they end up side-by-side on a subway bench. Matt forgot about some festival going on in Central Park, meaning there are no affordable taxis left at this point.

“Well, let’s just take the subway,” Matt heard himself say, and, hell, why not? His migraine from last night still hadn’t quite left, and it’s not like the general grossness of the subway could make it much worse.

“Matt, are you sure?” Foggy asked.

“Sure, do you mind?”

Foggy tilted his head. “Well, no, I don’t mind. I just thought you might.”

Matt shrugged innocently. “I’ll be fine, let’s just do it.”

Foggy stayed there for a moment before hesitantly following along.

Matt leans against Foggy from his seat in the corner. There’s a bit more of a crowd than usual today, and with his headache, it’s a bit more overwhelming. It doesn’t help that somebody threw up in here a couple of days ago, and even though the transportation workers clearly made an effort to clean it up, the smell still lingers, at least for Matt. And, as usual, a few farers haven’t showered in what seems like many days.

He focuses doubly on his hearing, if only to avoid the especially nasty scents and tastes, and, really, that will end up being his biggest mistake.

He’s a dumbass. He should’ve been paying better attention. He shouldn’t have let himself become so unaware of his surroundings. Oh, if only that bastard, Stick, could see him now.

Blissfully unaware of the situation that would unfold in just moments, he realizes just a second too late what the familiar smell and jack-rabbiting heart-beat across the room is planning. He has just an instant to sit up before—

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEECH

His brain peels in half.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


When he comes to his senses, it’s to chaos. 

Voices are speaking out, in confusion and frustration and fear. 

Two little kids are crying, one presumably over the sound and the other not knowing whether she can make it to the bathroom on time. 

One man is shouting, paranoid, and wondering if the brake being pulled is a sign. Two other riders are trying to calm him down.

And Foggy is shaking him.

“Fuck, Matt, Matt,” Foggy’s whispering close to his ear, and Matt pulls in a quick breath. 

His head pounds. 

“Are you okay?”

Matt swallows. “Good. I’m good,” he says.

“Bullshit,” Foggy laughs, but Matt can smell the tears leaking into his eyes. He tries harder to sit up. “Were you here for any of that?”

“The brake?” Matt asks. He breathes a pained laugh then says, “Unfortunately, yes.”

Foggy shoves him, not hard, but enough to get his point across. “No, Matt—that was, like, two minutes ago. You’ve just been sitting here unresponsive since then.”

Oh. “I’m good,” he says. 

The subway car starts to move again.

“I’ll call a taxi,” Foggy says. 

“No, I’m fine,” Matt insists. “The Met.”

Foggy laughs again, the same weak, hurt sound. “We’re going home.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hehe, I couldn't wait to post this. The final chapter will be out tomorrow, if I'm patient. Get excited, I think the final chapter might be my favorite one.


	9. The Right Choice

They enter Matt’s apartment, and Matt makes an immediate beeline for the bedroom. 

Of course, there was never any chance of getting out of this one easily.

Foggy makes a high “Mm” sound in the front of his mouth, and Matt doesn’t play dumb; he stops halfway through his next step, turning his head to the side in acknowledgement.

“Hey, Matt, why don’t we sit at the table?” Foggy suggests, though Matt knows Foggy well enough to know it’s less of a suggestion and more of a “do it or else”. 

Matt turns his head forward so Foggy can’t see the way his lips purse and eyes go wide. He’s screwed. 

“Let me just go to the bathroom first,” Matt comes up with, changing his direction as casually as possible.

“Sure,” Foggy agrees.

Matt proceeds to stall for the following few minutes. 

On the bright side, he can’t remember a time that his hands were cleaner. And, well, while he’s at it, he might as well apply some fresh deodorant. And, heck, he hasn’t cleaned his ears since…yesterday morning. Can’t put that off any longer.

When he finally joins Foggy at the table, Matt can tell that he’s only given a long stare. 

Well, he can’t tell for certain, but they’re both silent and still, and he gets that itching feeling that clues him in. 

Matt pushes his lips together. He tilts his head as he filters through the conversations and buzzings and sounds dancing around him. His leg jiggles.

Foggy sighs, a hard exhale of breath through his nose that must mean he’s upset.

Oh, Sarah from downstairs finally got a cat, that’s nice.

“Matt,” Foggy says.

Matt stills his leg, and he pushes a smile onto his face as he turns his head towards Foggy.

Foggy sighs that same sigh again. Then he stands up. 

Matt’s head tracks him as he steps over to the bar counter, scraping something cardboard against the table as he picks it up and sits back down across from Matt. 

“You up for a game of UNO?” Foggy asks as he opens up the box and pulls out the deck.

“Sure,” Matt agrees, and he scooches in his seat, resting his arms on the table and his chin in one hand.

He measures his breaths as Foggy shuffles the cards, picturing how his father would shuffle when they would play war or spades when he was a kid. Foggy’s good at shuffling cards; Matt’s not terrible, but he never really had a hand for it, and he still can’t figure out how to do the “bridge” after the initial shuffle, no matter how many times Foggy’s tried to show him.

“Cut the deck?” Foggy offers, and Matt taps the top of the deck in lieu of making a cut.

Foggy breathes a laugh, saying, “Joke’s on you when you find out I actually did cheat this time,” as he starts to deal out the cards.

“It’s a chance I’m willing to take,” Matt replies, still not relaxing, but offering a true smile.

He gathers up his cards and feels the braille labels, old enough that a couple have started to peel. 

Foggy flips over the first card, saying, “Alright, the first one is… Ha! It’s a red draw-two.”

Matt scoffs, reaching over to feel the card to confirm.

“Oh, so you did cheat,” Matt says as he draws his two cards.

“Did not!” Foggy laughs as he sets down his own card. “There, it’s just a red four.”

Matt smirks, feeling back through his cards for the yellow four.

They manage to make it a few more plays before Foggy says, “So, I’m sure you’re aware, but we do actually have to talk about some things.”

Matt hums, nodding.

“Glad we’re on the same page,” Foggy says. “I’m playing a reverse and a nine.”

Ruffling through his cards, Matt pulls out a draw-four wild-card. “How about blue,” he says pleasantly, and Foggy makes a dramatic gasp, pulling his hand to his heart.

“You wound me,” he says dramatically before drawing his four cards. 

Matt places down his blue seven as he waits. When Foggy draws in a breath, Matt speaks before he can:

“Sorry I ruined our date.”

Foggy places down his card and says, “You didn’t ruin anything. I played a one.”

“Sorry our date was ruined,” Matt retorts, and he puts his skip and next number card down without fanfare.

Letting out a breath, Foggy says, “Hey, I’m perfectly fine with playing UNO at home. Nothing was ruined, okay? The color’s back to yellow.”

“Sure,” Matt says, and he plays a random card from his grouping of yellow numbers.

Foggy manages to skip Matt three times on his next turn, getting dangerously close to uno, so Matt hits him with the draw-two’s he’s had in his hand.

“Oh, I am wounded,” Foggy bemoans, but he’s chuckling as he draws his cards. “So, I’ve been wondering,” he says, “how are things going with Drake? You know, on the Daredevil-side of things.”

“I’m getting a handle on it,” Matt says. 

“Changing the color to green. You know, you said that, but I’m not so sure. I mean—”

“What happened the other day was just a coincidence—”

“I’m not talking about the mouthful of paint, I—”

“I told you—”

“Matt. Please just listen for a sec, would you?”

Matt draws his card, sitting back against his chair and raising his head to face Foggy.

Foggy lets out a breath. “Thank you. You know I love you, right?”

“I love you, too.”

“I wish…” He sighs. “I wish you would keep me a little more involved. You know, in your Daredevil stuff.”

Matt opens his mouth to talk, but Foggy continues:

“I don’t mean everything; there’s some things that you don’t want to talk about, and I respect that. Just, like… I don’t know.” He waves his card hand around, fanning some air towards Matt as he finishes, “Some of the bigger stuff, like the things that eventually come back around to Karen and me.”

Matt chews on the inside of his cheek as he thinks. 

“Also, I’m playing a draw-two,” Foggy says, his tone more light-hearted.

Matt fakes a huffed laugh as he draws his two cards. After a moment, he says, “You’re right. I should never have—I’ll get a handle on it.”

“Matt, don’t apologize, just—” Tone exasperated, he continues, “just tell me what’s going on!” He sighs out his breath then finishes, “I just want to know what’s happening, and if I should be worried, or—or what I can do to help.”

“I don’t need help. Everything’s—”

“Please don’t say that everything’s fine,” Foggy interjects. “Buddy. Come on. I’m trying to give you space, let you do your whole ‘lone wolf’ thing—”

Matt squints at the “lone wolf” bit, but he wisely keeps his mouth shut as Foggy finishes:

“But I can’t keep doing this—this thing you do, where you pretend that everything’s fine even when you’re very clearly spiraling.”

Scoffing, Matt denies, “I am not spiraling.”

“Oh, he says he’s not spiraling. Well, my bad, then.” Foggy sets his cards down onto the table as he stands up, and Matt straightens in his seat. “You know, I’m feeling a little hungry, aren’t you? How about I whip something up?”

Matt already knows where this is going, and he can barely hold back his sigh, setting down his cards to stand up and move to lean against the chair’s back.

Foggy steps over to and opens up the fridge and hums in faux thoughtfulness. “What’s this?” he asks, voice high—he’s clearly putting on a show, and Matt, having missed his chance to shut it down, is stuck for the ride. “Why—Matt, it looks like your fridge is empty. And pantry, too!”

“I haven’t done my shopping for the week.”

“Okay, so you haven’t done the shopping, yet. That’s reasonable. I’ll buy that.” He steps over to the stove and a metallic ring sounds as he pulls the kettle off, moving to fill it with water from the sink. “Tea?”

“...Sure, if you’re having some.”

They’re quiet for a moment, as Foggy sets the kettle on top of the stove, turning on the burner then stepping back over to the pantry.

“Look, I’m not trying to ‘roast’ you or whatever,” the way he says “roast” makes Matt think he probably adds finger-quotes around it. “I just worry. I worry about you.”

“You shouldn’t.”

He huffs a laugh. “Now isn’t that a novel idea. Not possible, buddy. I’m sure you know how it feels.”

Unfortunately, he does. Matt just nods.

“So just tell me. Are things actually going well? Please don’t lie to me.”

Matt has to hold back his immediate urge to ease Foggy’s worries. He gets through the “everything” in “everything’s fine” before he changes tracks, ultimately saying:

“Everything’s… Well.” Voice weak, he admits, “It could be better.”

“Thank you,” Foggy says, and his voice isn’t just a front; based on tone, he means what he’s saying. “I really appreciate you being honest with me. Can we talk about what’s wrong and how we can make it better?”

Matt shakes his head, letting out a breath as Foggy comes back to his seat at the table. Laughing at himself, Matt sits back down, saying, “Honestly, it’s not even that serious. It’s nothing like Fisk, just—Drake is the worst. Teenagers are the worst.”

“I’m telling my sister you said that,” Foggy jokes, and Matt gives him a fake-serious look. After a moment, Foggy says, “So you still haven’t had any luck getting through to him?”

Huffing, Matt says, “Well obviously not, judging by what happened today. He won’t listen to reason, he won’t listen to Daredevil.” Throwing a hand in the air, he continues, “I just don’t know what else to do here! I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I’m—” He won’t say that he growls… Maybe it could be called a forceful groan.

“That sounds really stressful,” Foggy sympathizes, even though Matt can hear his lips pull into a smirk—probably at the growl-groan -thing. Matt will give him this one. 

“It’s not the best,” Matt concedes lightheartedly. “But really, I can handle it. I’ve—” He cuts himself off, but Foggy accurately guesses the rest of the sentence.

“You’ve…been through worse?” 

Bingo. Matt shrugs. “You were there for law school.”

Foggy laughs. “You’ve got a point there, buddy; law school was…rough.” They both chuckle, remembering the most cringey parts, mostly in 1L. “But this is no cake-walk either. Need I remind you you weren’t running around saving the city back then?”

Matt scratches the back of his neck. “Please, I’m not doing all that.”

“Right, just the entirety of Hell’s Kitchen.”

Matt’s quiet for a moment, thinking it over.

Foggy continues, “Buddy. Be realistic here. You’re practically working two full-time jobs. When do you get a break?”

“I get breaks.”

“When?”

Laughing, Matt says, “Foggy, I don’t go out as Daredevil every night.”

Adjusting in his seat, Foggy says, “What about work, then? I know you go out every night of the weekend.”

“Weekends are the busiest. I can’t just leave the neighborhood to its own devices.”

“That’s exactly my point!” Foggy says, gesturing with one hand. “You work every weekday, at least, and you’re Daredevil at least every weekend. When is there time for Matt in there?”

“There’s plenty of time for me in there. We go out every couple of days.”

“Sure, that’s—look, here’s my point: at least one day out of the week, I get to go home from work and do absolutely nothing. And there’s nothing to worry about and nothing to be responsible for. When do you get a break from all the responsibility?”

“I can handle it.”

Foggy pulls in a breath then lets it back out, sounding like he’s about to say something then aborts at the last moment. He starts again, voice low and heart beating fast, “You’re going to burn out. Hard. And I don’t wanna see it happen.”

Matt’s own heart skips a beat. He can’t mean—

Foggy continues, “I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times. We need a vacation.”

The breath held in Matt’s chest falls out. Right. Not a break-up.

Matt pushes his cards to the side and rests his arms on the table, hands clasped high and his chin resting on top. He ponders it for a moment. Foggy really has brought this up quite a few times. He doesn’t mean to shut it down every time, since it’s clearly important to him, but…

“I don’t know, Fogs…”

“I know, I know, Daredevil. But listen, you’ve been doing this superhero thing for, what? Two years? Don’t get me wrong, that’s a lot of time, but you’re kidding me if you say Hell’s Kitchen couldn’t survive without you for one week.”

Pushing his lips together, Matt’s hands fall down, crossed on the table in front of him as he thinks. It was fine-ish without Daredevil for all the time before Matt put on the mask, Foggy has a point there. 

Barreling on, Foggy says again, “And you said it yourself that this is nothing like it was with Fisk. I’m not trying to discount your struggles, because those teenagers do sound awful to deal with, but if that’s really the biggest fight you’re facing these days…” He chews the inside of his cheek then finishes, “Matty, this could be our best chance.”

He has to admit that Foggy’s making a couple of good points. “I’ll have to think about it.”

“What’s there to think about?” Foggy asks, and though he doesn’t sound angry, he doesn’t sound particularly happy about Matt’s answer, either.

“I just—I need to ask around. I have to make sure the place won’t fall apart while I’m gone.” Then, because he knows he has to convince Foggy of this, he points out: “I won’t be able to relax unless I’m sure I’m not missing anything.”

The kettle starts whistling then, and Foggy lets out a breath. He stands up to turn off the burner and says, “Okay. You’re probably right. Just—ask, please? I know you need a vacation, but, honestly? I could use one, too.”

“I’ll look into it,” Matt says honestly, nodding and enjoying the smell of the tea leaves as Foggy puts them into strainers, clinking those into mugs and pouring the water overtop.

Walking back to the table with their mugs, Foggy says, “That’s all I ask, buddy.”

He sets one mug down in front of Matt then sits with his own, pushing his own set of cards to the side of the table. UNO has been abandoned, it would seem.

Matt sits up in his seat, feet crossed at his ankles, and pulls his mug closer to himself, wrapping his hands around it. He hears Foggy do the same, and for a moment, they just sit.

“So…” Foggy begins. “Look, I know you probably don’t want to, but can we talk about earlier?”

He’s right, Matt really would prefer not to. “Sure,” he says. After a moment of silence, he continues, “You told me not to apologize, but I really am sorry for freaking out back there. I was…overstimulated, I suppose.”

“Matt,” Foggy says, and he puts a hand over Matt’s. “That’s nothing to be sorry for. It’s not like it was your fault.”

“I feel like it is my fault.”

“Literally, why?”

Breathing a self-deprecating laugh, Matt says, “I should’ve been paying better attention; I should’ve seen it coming.” Then a little bit too much honesty bursts through: “I shouldn’t have been on the subway at all. Nothing good ever comes from that.”

“Okay, so that’s a good point. Why were we on the subway?”

Matt’s eyebrows scrunch together. “What are you talking about? You saw—”

“No, no, I don’t mean the taxi thing. I mean—why didn’t we just call it off and do this? No offense, dude, but I don’t remember you being much of a museum person.”

“I like museums just fine,” Matt defends.

Foggy laughs. “So you expect me to believe that you just randomly decided you wanted to visit the Met. No prompting, nothing special, just a random art mood.”

Baffled, Matt flips a hand, saying, “You mentioned it to Karen. I’m sorry for wanting to take you to see something you’re interested in?”

“Matt, it’s an art museum. An  _ art  _ museum.”

“I like art.”

“I’m not saying you can’t. Just—buddy, you didn’t have to push yourself to go just for me. I could’ve gone by myself, or with Karen or my parents or something.” He draws in a breath, scooching his chair in more, then continues, “Look, if you actually were interested, then that’s great! But seriously, it’s not a big deal.”

Matt considers for a moment. “I wouldn’t have minded going,” he says finally.

“Well, sure you wouldn’t have minded, but would you have actually had any fun?”

“Sure I would’ve had fun,” he says. With a smirk, he drops the line, “I’m always happy when I’m with you.”

Foggy snorts, saying, “Okay, that’s cute.” He takes a small sip of his tea then continues, “I guess I’m just—you’ve been weird lately.”

“What do you mean?” Matt asks, and even though he goes all out and puts on Innocent Face #2, Foggy seems like he’s picking up on something. 

Something that maybe Matt would prefer he not pick up on.

“Like—hmm. We’ve been going out a lot, like…more than we used to, and I’ve been having fun, but today and then at dinner—” He pulls his idea together, hands leaving his mug and pushing to sit up, saying pointedly, “Matt, you are having fun, right?”

“Of course I’m having fun.”

Foggy continues, “Because I thought we’ve just been having good luck lately, but—Matt. Have you been being honest with me?”

Matt swallows, heart pounding faster than Foggy’s. “What do you mean?” he asks, because he doesn’t want to say he’s been lying; he’s been trying really hard to be honest with Foggy since he found out about Daredevil, and especially since they’ve started dating. “I haven’t lied to you.”

Because he hasn’t. Little white lies don’t count, everybody tells them. He hasn’t said anything to Foggy that was blatantly untrue.

“Have you been…withholding something?”

“Like what?”

“Like, I don’t know!” Foggy wraps his hands in his hair, saying, “I don’t know, Matt! Just—you’re supposed to tell me what’s going on in that head of yours.”

“We don’t always tell each other everything,” Matt defends, and he pushes his tea a little further away, clasping his hands together on top of the table, rubbing the nail on his thumb.

“Well, sure, not everything, but the important stuff! I feel like I’m out of the loop right now, like there’s something I’m missing. Like…” Drawing in a breath, he says: “You’ve been doing the guilt-thing again, haven’t you?”

“I don’t have a guilt-thing.”

Foggy laughs, though it doesn’t sound genuine. “You definitely do. Some guilt-anxiety-mishmash. Matt, be honest. Have you actually been enjoying our dates?” 

“I’m serious; I always have fun when I’m with you.”

“And I have fun with you, too. That doesn’t mean I want to go dumpster-diving with you.”

Matt’s eyebrows scrunch together at the non-sequitur.

“Matt, my point is that we don’t always have to do things that you think I want to do. We can do the things that you want to do, too.”

“My things are boring.”

“What? Who ever said just hanging out is boring? Do you find it boring?”

“Well, no, but—”

Foggy interrupts, “Exactly, and guess what? I never said it was boring, either. Where did you get that idea?”

Matt pulls the mug back into his hands as he says, “I don’t know, I just—I didn’t want you to be bored.”

“So, what? You decided to just pretend you were having a good time when—were you even having any fun at all?”

“Of course I had fun! Bowling was a great time. And your apple-picking idea was great.”

“I had a good time, too, and I’m glad you gave those ideas a shot, but if you weren’t having a good time the other times then why didn’t you just tell me?”

“It’s not a big deal! You know how I am—”

“What do you mean ‘how you are’?”

“I just don’t want you to get bored. You deserve better than that.”

Foggy’s quiet across the table. He shifts to rest his chin in his hand, a classic Foggy thinking-pose. Then he stands up, walking to lean against the back of his chair, facing Matt, and Matt straightens up subconsciously, tilting his head. 

“Honey,” Foggy says finally, “you realize I love you, right?”

Matt’s face softens at the endearment, saying genuinely, “I love you, too.”

“And you realize this isn’t just a fling for me,” Foggy says. “I mean—I’m in this for the long-haul, buddy.”

“Me, too.”

“I’m not going anywhere. When you say that I ‘deserve better’…”

“I just mean—”

“I know what you mean.” Foggy turns around, walking away a couple of steps, pushing his hands into his hair. “God, Matt,” he says, voice strained. “How long have you been thinking like this?”

Matt rubs his thumb against the handle of his mug, saying, “It’s not an issue, Fogs, I’m just trying to give you what you deserve.”

“Well what about what you deserve? You deserve nice things, too,” Foggy says, turning back around to lean back against the chair-back.

“I have plenty of nice things,” Matt defends. “You’re enough for me.”

Foggy breathes a laugh, throwing his hands up and saying, “Do you even realize what you’re saying? Didn’t you think that, I don’t know, maybe you’re enough for me, too?” 

Matt’s quiet, mouth parted open but with no words to say. 

Foggy walks around the table to where Matt’s sitting, and he wraps his arms around Matt’s neck from behind, hands resting on his chest and chin on top of his head.

After a moment, Foggy turns his head to whisper, “You’re my best friend, okay? I don’t need anything else.”

Matt wraps his hands over Foggy’s, saying, “I’m sorry.”

Foggy hugs him tighter, saying, “Don’t be. Just—I’m not going anywhere, okay?”

Swallowing, Matt nods.

They stay like that for some time before Foggy tightens his grip then lets go, stepping back to his seat, and Matt takes a couple sips of his tea, if only to have something to do with his hands.

After a couple more moments of silence, Foggy says, “I’m serious about that vacation, you know,” though his tone is light, teasing. “Two weeks. Let’s leave in two weeks.”

Matt breathes a laugh, turning his head away. He chews on his cheek for a second. “I think… Two weeks should work.”

He can hear Foggy grin, and Foggy says, “I am smiling so hard right now. I’ll come up with some ideas. You just get everything sorted on your end.”

Matt nods, but though he’s smiling, his fingers rub together on the table. 

“Hey,” Foggy says, and he rests a hand on top of Matt’s. “We’re gonna work this out, yeah? We’ll compromise.”

Matt smiles. “I know,” he says. “It’ll work out.”

Foggy grins across from him, and Matt knows he’s made the right choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, the emotions are real. Here it is. My first multi-chaptered story has been completed. Thank you so much for reading!! And thanks to everybody who commented for your encouragements along the way. I’m so glad that this story didn’t just stay in my head. There’s something special about creating something yourself. 
> 
> Guys, this was my very first story that I attempted plot in. If anybody has any constructive criticism, I would be happy to hear it! I’d love to know what I did well and what I missed the mark on so I can improve. 
> 
> Either way, thank you again so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed!!


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